
Class. 
Book- 




HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 



OR 



SAUNTERINGS IN NEW ENGLAND 



BY 



WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON 

AUTHOR OF "PASTORAL DAYS" 



Jllustmtcb 



"Every vista a axthedml 
Every bough a revelation" 



NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1903 



1 1 ^-'3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, by 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



All rights reserved. 



8y Transfer 

0. (;. Public Library 

OEC 28 1938 



WITHDRAWN 

195S73 



TO 

]MY IVIOTHER 

ALL THAT IS WORTHY IN THIS VOLUME 

i Debitatc in £ooc ani) (&ratituk 



Saunterings. 



PAGE 



I. Along the Road . , 17 

11. The Squirrel's Highway 61 

III. Across Lots 97 

IV. Among Our Footprints 127 



Illustrations. 



Designed by the Author. 



TITLE. ENGHAVER. PAGE 

REVERIE F. S. King Frontispiece 

A PRINCIPALITY . . . . ' Clark and Pettit 8 

A MEADOW GLIMPSE J. Rochester ii 

"WHO WISELY SINGS, WILL SING AS THEY". . H.Deis 12 

BECKONING LE.WES W. M'Cracken 14 

A TRANSFIGUR.\TION T. He.\rd 14 

AN ARABESQUE (Vignette Title) T. Heard 15 

"QUI VIVE" R. Phair 16 

A HUDDLE J. TiNKEY 17 

MORNING IN THE MEADOW W. H. Morse 19 

A WAY-SIDE BENEFACTOR W. H. Morse 21 

TRAMPS Henry Marsh 23 

A WAY-SIDE HOME F. Juengling ....:... 26 

GOSSIP AND TWITTER Smithwick and Fre.nch . . 

THE SWAYING SHADOW R. Hoskin 



. . 30 

• • 32 

A WELCO.ME SIGNAL J. Filmer 35 

THE PEERLESS PLUME F. S. King 

ENOCH EMMONS Henry Wolf 

A WAY-SIDE BARGAIN Smithwick and French . . . 

THE TOLL-BRIDGE R. Hoskin 

FRIENDLY COUNSEL Smithwick and French . . . 

FOLLOWING THE RIPPLE J. P. Davis 

THE VESPER SPARROW Smithwick and French .... 52 

THE TWILIGHT VOICE W. H. Morse 54 

FIRE-FI-LES J. p. Davis 55 

LINKS W. H. Clark 56 



37 
40 
44 
47 
49 
50 



lO ILLUSTRATIONS. 

TITLE. ENGRAVER. PAGE 

THOUGHTS M.Deis 58 

BENEDICTION OF TH?: DEW E. Scii<>onm.\kf.r 58 

THE SQUIRREI.'.S HIGHWAY (Vignette Title). . . . W.H.Morse 59 

PHILOSOrnV in a NUTSHEI.I E. C. Held 60 

THE EDGE OF THE FIELD W. H. Morse 61 

THE HAUNT OF THE HERON R. Hoskin 63 

A BRAMBLE CLUSTER H.Gray 67 

A WINTER RENDEZVOUS F. S. King 70 

A SIDE-HILL PASTURE J. Tinkey 73 

A CLEARING F. Levin 76 

THE HAUNTED HOUSE O. Wigand 79 

PEEPS BETWEEN THE RAILS Hoskin and Deis 82 

LOOKING UPHILL E. C. Held 86 

SHADOWED Henry Wolf 88 

VINE-CLUSTERS F. Juengling 90 

ADIEU W. B. Witte 91 

THE PASTURE-BARS W. H. Morse 92 

THE "ROVER OF THE UNDERWOODS" .... T. L. Smart 94 

ACROSS LOTS (Illustrated Title) F. S. King 95 

UNANSWERED W. M'Cracken 96 

THE SHEEP-LOT W. Miller 97 

HILL-SIDE STUBBLE F. Juengling 99 

THE WEED MEADOW J. Tinkey 102 

"YE END OF MAN" F. Levin 104 

TESTIMONY OF THE IMMORTELLES G.E.Johnson. ....... 106 

FIELD BOUQUET Henry Marsh 108 

MAGNOLIAS . Henry Marsh no 

ORCHID G. Geyer in 

IRIS G. Geyer iii 

THE SIMPLER'S FAVORITE A. Hayman 113 

THE MYSTERIOUS ERRAND J. Tinkey 114 

DUSK F. Levin 115 

AUNT HULDY ' . . . . G. Geyer 116 

SUN-DEWS F. A. Pettit 119 

AU REVOIR R. Phair 122 

THE IMAGE J. H. Grimley 124 

THE SEPULCHRE J. H. Grimley 124 

FALSE PROMISES (Illustrated Title) E. C. Held 125 

"BENEATH OUR SHOON " J. H. Grimley 126 

THE MORNING GOSSAMER F. S, King 127 



ILL USTRA TIONS. 



II 



TITLE. ENGRAVER. PAGE 

THE SONG-SPARROWS NEST W. H. Morse 130 



133 

135 
136 

137 
139 



A BURIAL Henry Marsh 

ON THE SCENT. . , A. Hayman 

THE "POOR BEETLE" E. C. Held 

UNDER THE GLASS G. H. Buechner 

THE INSECT-TIGER R. Hoskin 

AN UNGAINLY VICTIM E. Holsey 140 

A PROWLER Henry Marsh 142 

STRATEGY VERSUS STRENGTH Henry Marsh 144 

BIRD-NEST FUNGUS H. Deis 146 

FAIRY PARASOLS W. H. Clark 146 

DICENTRA H. Gray 14S 

A VICTIM OF GREED E. C. Held 150 

COMPANIONS P. Annin 151 

THE ORCHID AND ITS FRIEND J. Tinkey 153 

CONSTRUCTION OF ORCHID G. H. Buechner 154 

REMOVAL OF POLLEN G. H. Buechner 154 

A MARTYR TO SCIENCE G. H. Buechner 155 

FINIS J. Rochester 157 














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Along the Road. 



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" i'ur I have learned 
To look on Nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes 
The still, sad music of humanity. 
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts — a sense subliae 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows, and the woods. 
And mountains, and of all that we behold 
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world 
Of eye and ear, both what they half create 
And what perceive ; well pleased to recognize 
In Nature and the language of the sense 
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse. 
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
Of all my moral being." 








^w^-^-'S^^ 





eye 



"/^A-DAAY! Ca-daay! 
^ Ca-daay!" 
" Go, drive 'um, Shep ! Go, 
drive "um ! Gosh all hemlock ! 
wy don't ye go? Ef I wa'n't 
a-urgin' on ye, yeu'd 'a bin thar time 
'n' agin. I swaou, you're an old fool 
dog ; ye don't airn yer keep. Go, drive 
I tell ye !" And now we hear a half-suppressed grunt, and the 
of fancy might almost see the whizzing stone that followed. It 



^x 



\ 



l8 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

was a voice full of that panting vehemence born of an excited temper, 
with a lack of the wherewithal to give it full utterance ; for there were 
some questionable utterances under that short breath, and its pufifing 
modulations and labored accompaniment of heavy footfalls pictured a 
hot and excited chase. But it was a picture through the sense of sound 
alone, for its source and all its surroundings were concealed in a dense 
cloud of dust, which, like a veil of yellow smoke, had risen over the road 
before us, and shut out all our prospect. 

" Go, drive "um, Shep !" yelled the remnant of the panting voice. 
"Go, drive 'um. Thar! thcfs suthin' like. Naow, give it to 'um lively T 
and a fresh cloud rises up among the trees amid a trampling sound of 
a host of hurrying hoofs and a half-human chorus of the bleating sheep; 
and now Shep's voice is heard among the scramble, and now we hear 
the ring of boyish voices, intermingled with the tuneful clatter of the 
falling pasture bars. Erelong, as we follow on, the dense cloud softens, 
sinks, and melts away among the trees, and lingers above the meadow 
grass; while the landscape steals softly into view, first the apple-tree 
against the sky, and now its overhanging branch and shadow on the 
wall ; and in a moment more we see the woolly huddle in the road, from 
whence, hemmed in on either side, they sally up the bank, and frisk 
away to pastures new in the sloping orchard lot beyond. 

How many beautiful pictures have I seen emerge from a cloud of 
dust ujxm a country road ! How many of those pictures have again 
been half obliterated by the dust of after- years, only to be recalled to 
life by even so trivial a thing as the bleating of a lamb, the ring of a 
boyish laugh, or the homely music of the falling pasture bars! 

Pity for him whose heart knows no such sensitive and latent chord 
of sympathy to yield its harmony along the way, lending an inspiration 
to the present, while sanctifying the past, and drawing from its better 
memories a renewed delight in living! There is no walk in life, how- 
ever dull or prosaic, no circumstances so commonplace, that they can 
stifle this ever-present melody. It sings in unison with nature in a 
thousand different keys — in a falling leaf or a cricket song. The rain- 
drops of to-day but repeat the old-time patter on the garret-roof. The 
noisy katydid, whenever heard, is that same untiring nightly visitant 
outside your window to whose perpetual whim you loved to listen, and 
in fancy tantalize until you dropped off to sleep upon your pillow. 
This skimming swallow sailing near will never cross your path but so 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



19 



surely will he fly to those same old nests beneath the barn-yard eaves. 
If there is ever a blessed mood " most musical, most melancholy," it may 
be found beneath the refining influence of just such reminiscences; for 
whether or not there are added elements of home association, there are 




~'^' 



.,/ 



'•X^^- 



w 



/^\ . / alwavs a le- 

gion of indelible 
memories that love to lino-er 
along the country road and lane — 
highways and byways beloved of fancy 
-paths of recollection filled with footprints 
which not even the tempest can obliterate. 
Go where you will among New England hills — it matters not — seek 
out some isolated town hidden far away from any past associations, and 
how quickly do you find yourself upon the same old tangled road ! 
The same familiar friends have come and crowded on either side to 
meet you as of old ; the same birds sing in the self-same trees ; and the 



20 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

quivering aspens whisper and clap their hands in welcome, as in years 
gone by. Here, too, is the identical low-roofed house among the maples, 
with its vine-clad porch and open door — the always open door, betoken- 
ing the kind and open-hearted hospitality within, and which in New 
England is abroad in all the air, seeking you out even in the loneliest 
byway. 

There is one of these roads I have in mind. I only made its ac- 
quaintance a few short months ago, but it already seems as though it 
had been m\' tramping-ground for years. I know its every nook, its 
every fence-corner ; and many are its tender flowers that I have picked 
and torn to pieces in my love and desire to know them better, and 
many are the mockeries, called " sketches," which still exist to libel and 
profane its beauty. It is a single drive among the hills and dells of 
a charming nook, scarcely a league in length ; but where, by some 
happy chance or rare design. Nature has contrived to bring together a 
typical expression — a representative congress, as it were — of New Eng- 
land's most charming individuality and character. There are whole sec- 
tions now and then which seem to have been transplanted bodily from 
the wild woods of Maine or the rugged borders of the Housatonic. 
The brooks reflect the umbrageous banks of my own Shepaug. The 
same old rumbling saw-mills have floated down the streams, and lodged 
upon the banks among their overhanging willows ; and if a rustic native 
chances on your way, he is the same old neighbor you so well remem- 
ber, or at least you feel a certainty that he must be his brother or 
some near relation. 

I have a note -book full from cover to cover with transcripts from 
this roadside, but its record is bewildering ; neither is it necessary ; for, 
as I look upon its familiar shape beside me, there are certain pages 
which shine through those closed covers, and I find myself once more 
upon that road without its farther aid, sitting, perhaps, beneath the sway- 
ing beech-boughs, listening to some ill-tempered, scolding squirrel among 
the sunny leaves, or to the music of the tiny crystal stream across the 
way, as it shoots along through its mossy groove, and pours, in a little 
glistening column, into the old log water-trough. Who is he that is not 
athirst as he nears the old log water-trough } Who can pass it b}- with- 
out a greeting, or even a grateful touch of the lips } 

I often wonder whether is it alone the fancy that imparts to the 
waj'-side spring that wild and subtle flavor.-' Does it not tell therein the 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



21 



story of its mysterious wanderings through the leaf-mould and the rooty 
loam ; of trickling grottoes, cool and dark, among the mossy bowlders ; 
of loiterings among the beds of fern and coltsfoot, with here a silent 
pool among the matted leaves, overhung with pale anemones and fringe 
of maidenhair, and there a sudden 
precipice, where it finds its , 
way in trickling beads . ' j?s--*. 
among festoons of fairy 
fumitory, and is lost again amid 
the rocky crevices beneath ; now - ,;sv 
bubbling up where pale dicentras 
spread their plumy foliage, and 
leaves of jewel- 
weed turn its 



the floating 




face to si! 




Hi^-. 



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5 \ 





A WAYSIDE BENEFACTOR. 



ver ; here drinking in the healing virtues of the 
\ pine from some soggy fallen cone, or taking tribute from 
,- the aromatic roots of ginseng and wild-ginger, while it nour- 
ishes in return their juicy leaves, that rise and crowd above 
its surface? There are faint suggestions, too, of hemlock and arbutus, 
of winter-green and bloodroot, and a host of those other wood compan- 
ions, which you may be sure it has sought out and kissed along its way. 
And now, as it emerges, pure as crystal, into the broad, open light, 



22 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

see how its rustic trough would mimic its woodland solitudes with gar- 
lands of trailing vine and fern. See the velvet clumps of deep -green 
moss that crowd about its edge and dip beneath its surface, while all 
below, among its supporting rocks, every chink and cranny has become 
a nestling-place for some contented, moisture-loving spray. 

I sat and watched this picture for a long and pleasant hour. I saw 
the shadows of its overhanging beech play among its bright and fresh 
mosaic — saw the wood-thrush sit upon its brink and wet his throat, 
tired and hoarse, it would almost seem, from his incessant singing. The 
robin and the bluebird came; and the complaining cat-bird, interrupted 
in its bath, shook down a shower of imprecation at that weary traveller, 
hot and dusty, who stopped and bowed his head before the way -side 
benefactor, and passed, refreshed, along his way. 

And with him we will follow. No, not yet, for there is a touch of 
humor in that venerable water-trough. It has its little harmless but 
doubly pointed joke for every intimate acquaintance, and no doubt en- 
joys it; for already the running water seems voiced in a rippling laugh, 
as we seat ourselves upon the bank for an earnest interview with these 
forked burrs which have impaled themselves in ranks and squads and 
entire companies upon every available portion of our clothing. 

The study of botany is not a general pursuit. There are many who 
could not tell an akene from a silicle to save their lives ; but only ask 
them if they ever saw a beggar' s-^ick, and they will glow with that true 
enthusiasm born of success in scientific research ; for there is at least 
one page of botany with which every one is familiar — the family of the 
burrs, the cockles, and the tick-seed. You are always running against 
them in your rambles. They are the vagrants and the vagabonds of the 
vegetable world, the veritable tramps of the highways; and, like their 
afifinity in human guise, they are, almost without exception, worthless 
immigrants from other shores. Nor has their emigration fever ever left 
them. It seems destined to become chronic and hereditary. They cling 
but lightly to their birthplace, are always ready to leave it on the slight- 
est opportunity, and are ever on the watch to steal a passage to new 
and untried fields upon the first humble craft that shall chance their 
way. 

Some of them, like the armed bur- marigolds, are bold and daring, 
and jab you with their spears in true highwayman fashion ; others, as 
in the agrimony and enchanter's nightshade, sly and cautious, hiding 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



-J 




in unsuspected places, and eluding your detection until discovered 
y ^\ against the background of your garments. But 

i ^^ they are all our very constant , ' i / 

companions in the country. We 
have, as it were, been forced to 
become attached to them, and, af- 
ter all, it must be admitted they 
appear to their worst advantage 
when separated from their original 
surroundings. There is a certain 
charm of eccentric individuality, for 
instance, in a full -barbed 
cluster of bur-marigold ; 
and then the tapering 
raceme of the agri- 
mony rising above 
its shapely leaves, -. 
with its close -nod- 
ding, urn-shaped burrs, 
is really a graceful 
denizen of our woods , 
and byways, while I 
am sure we all would miss 
the ornamental symmetry of the bur- 
dock from the tangles of our fences, 
lanes, and roadsides. 

An interesting chapter might 
be written, and afford ample oppor- 
.'i>'^<; tunity for decoration, on the theme 

of " Nature as a Sower." We have here ' 
seen a class of plants whose only means 
of dissemination is through the medium of 
alien transportation, of which design their 
very conformation gives perfect evidence. Oth- 
ers shed their seeds upon the running streams, 
C^'\]^ or hurl them in the current with a jerk, to be 
^' '^A washed along and lodged upon the shingly 
J \ sand-bars. The germs of many of our fruits 



^ 



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^^ 



1^ 



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■VS 



24 HIGH IV AYS AND HYWAYS. 

and berries look to the birds for their future opportunities of growth, 
while nuts find an abundant means of distribution in the joini propen- 
sities of boys and squirrels. Others, like the samaras of the tulip-tree 
and pine, are launched from the tree-tops, and flutter with a will to the 
farthest limit of their strength ; while many, more ethereal and spirit- 
like, as in the thistle and the fireweed, are provided with wings as light 
as air: they are at home upon the breeze, and the whole earth is their 
kingdom. 

To the latter class belongs that embodiment of grace, our roadside 
clematis — the queen of all our native climbers — trailing over walls and 
fences, throwing its embroidered canopy over the unsightly stubble, cov- 
ering the ungainly branch with waving sprays of borrowed verdure, and 
swinging its drooping arabesques in most charming abandon along the 
borders of every pond or running brook. 

This beautiful vine brings renewed delight to me with each succes- 
sive year; and next autumn, when I follow once more these pleasant 
rambles, when I can look again upon these downy clusters, silvered in 
the sunlight, or shadowed in cloudy puffs against the luminous, translu- 
cent leaves, while I enjoy the endless charm of its graceful spray, I hope 
it will forgive me for so idle, albeit so loving, an attempt to reproduce 
its beauty on the printed page. 

The occasional spreading copse of clematis is as certain an accom- 
paniment of the New England road as are its footprints or its wheel- 
ruts ; but here upon this matchless road we come upon a long, low 
stretch where for rods and rods on every side it spreads above the 
shrubbery in a perfect maze of intermingled leaves and fuzzy puffs, with 
here and there a leaf of fiery sumac bursting like flame among the 
smoky seeds. It crowds upon your carriage - wheels ; adventurous tips 
reach out upon the highway, and erelong your very whipstock would 
be sure to feel the embrace of its circling leaf-stem. And still I would 
venture to say that, search where you will in all that wide-spread tangle, 
it were a task to find a single sprig in which this charming vine has 
been untrue to its pure ideal of perfect elegance and grace. 

Not a hundred feet beyond this display, and we meet another of 
those little surprises ever in store for us along these roads, and often 
affording a contrast which almost bears the impress of design ; for here 
certainly the line of beauty is directly confronted with the stiff, unbend- 
ing perpendicular. Two sloping banks rise up abruptly on either side. 



ALONG THE ROAD. 25 

guarded by ranks and tiers of towering mulleins — a veritable army of 
sentinels, erect, armed, and ammunitioned for the fray. If you doubt it, 
search them closer. Here are pockets full of fine black powder, and 
pistils by the thousand, primed and loaded to the muzzle. And does 
your fancy detect the odor of the smoke of battle .' No ; it is but the 
incense of the pennyroyal that they are trampling under their mocca/- 
soned feet, and which carpets the ground about them. 

But we are soon out of their reach, for a quick, sharp turn takes us 
j.ip a steep ascent, and we wonder what will be the outlook when our 
tugging pony reaches the open summit. Here the road has run up to 
look around a bit, and get its bearings in the landscape, taking one 
short glimpse of a billowy field of golden wheat, an orchard, a winding 
brook, and — but what else we cannot see, for now we make a sudden 
dip, only to dive into a dark, umbrageous tunnel of interwoven maples, 
and we draw the rein to let our eyes wander among the cool shadows 
of the sugar -grove, among the lichen -painted rocks and surrounding 
beds of pale -green fern, and perhaps to picture to ourselves the busy, 
snowy scene of early March, with its trickling spigots, and fumes of 
boiling sap emanating from that old sugar -house now almost lost to 
sight among the leaves. 

Alas ! how much virgin sweetness has been condensed into solidity 
beneath the roof of that innocent shanty ! — solidity destined only to be 
used thereafter as a delicate flavoring for genuine brown sugar to gull 
the palate of the city- bred, and awaken pleasant pastoral visions, and 
wistful longings for " Vermont's " rural sweetness and simplicity. No 
wonder the sugar -maples of New England color more deeply than in 
other sections ! The enforced indignity of competing in the market 
with plain plebeian molasses sugar should alone put them to the deeper 
blush. 

No sooner do the shadows of these maples leave us than we are 
winding around the edge of a steep and rocky hill -side, where weed- 
grown "pasture-lands" creep far up toward the summit, with great gray 
masses of granite bowlders cropping out among the wild confusion, 
where coarse brown brakes, sweet fern, and spreading juniper run riot 
over the ground, and every open slope is terraced from side to side with 
sheepwalks. Below, we look down across a field of tasselled maize, with 
its rustling leaves and nodding plumes, and we know from the line of 
thrifty willows at its lower edge that a rivulet has there found its way. 



26 



/// G H IV A YS A ND BY WAY S. 



We can trace its channel far up the opposite bank, where its winding 
course is marked among the herbage, and its glistening cascades flash 
in the sunlight among the sloping daisy fields. Yonder, high up, near 
the summit of the ridge, we espy a little farm pinned to its slope by 




^^f^^^l 



rows of stakes and poles. Per- _ -"^^ '''. ' ^ 

haps, on a second thought, it may be 

a hop plantation or a little vineyard, but a way-side home. 

how surely must it need that firm stone 

wall along its lower edge to brace against ! Now comes a distant " gee " 
and " haw " and snap of whip, and you look with wonder at the lum- 
bering o.\-team that can even stand, much less make its way, upon 
so steep a footing. But that persevering pioneer will yet redeem this 
ruseed waste, and make it blossom as the rose. The bed of stones and 
bowlders will soon grow into a net -work of sturdy walls, which will 
remain for ages monuments of his unflagging industry. Perhaps, too, 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



27 



from his lofty perch he can look down for happy inspiration upon a 
little snuggery hidden somewhere among the trees below. Not that 
typical old Puritanic homestead of other days, but a snow-white cottage, 
bright and new, with modern reforms and comforts, the dwelling of the 
new generation — a little principality all by itself in the landscape, with 
its small village of trim out-buildings, its barns, and stable, corn-crib, 
ice-house, and hen-house, its close -clipped door-yard, its open porch, 
aglow with thrifty house-plants, with peeps of the tidy cosiness within, 
and, best of all, that brisk little body who is the life and light of all, 
and who blows the noonday horn that sends its echo to listening, eager 
ears far up among the hill-side stubble. 

But in a moment this picture, too, has glided by, to be replaced by 
another in this lovely panorama — a silent passage through a dim and 
lofty forest of sombrous pines and hemlocks. The rural and the pas- 
toral are forgotten ; the daisied fields and waving corn are banished far 
from the thought. You are winding through a wilderness of nature's 
unredeemed primeval solitude. No sky above, nothing but a sombre 
roof that seems to echo your very whispers. There are sounds like 
weary sighs that seem to float and linger in the air, while on every 
hand the stately columns close in upon each other like a limitless cathe- 
dral, and the cool incense of the mossy mould breathes its benediction 
all through the vast interior. Here dwells 



••£3' 



"A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts." 

The impress of that spirit which has found its noblest mortal voice in 
that song of immortality, "A Forest Hymn," whose music, like a 
mighty anthem, seems ever floating on "invisible breath" through the 
"stilly twilight" of this solemn temple: 

"Ah! why 
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect 
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore 
Only among the crowd, and under roofs 
That our frail hands have raised ?" 

How grim and sombre are the testimonies of this gloomy wilderness ! 
Here are old bearded patriarchs who have looked out above and seen a 
world reclaimed and transfigured by the hand of man, while their feet 
are rooted in an ancient cemetery of their fallen ancestry, a chaos of 



28 HIGH IV A YS A ND B Y IF A YS. 

graves crowding above in moss-grown mounds, or down deep on deep 
beneath, crumbled, mingled, and lost in the shapeless mould. 

This ancient retreat is known as No Man's Wood, a disputed inher- 
itance from by-gone centuries, without deed or title. For fifty years it 
has been a bone of contention between two factions in the town. It is 
claimed by the descendants of an old Puritan pioneer, who, it is stated, 
made the purchase individually from the Sharrapaug Indians for the 
tempting consideration of a flint-lock musket, a keg of rum, and a gold 
toothpick. Never in history has the commercial genius of the Yankee 
had a more illustrious exemplar. But his claim could never be fully 
established to the entire satisfaction of the opposition, consisting of two 
hundred or more unreasonable descendants of several other contempo- 
raneous townsmen ; and so No Man's Wood owes its existence to a vil- 
lage feud. And blessed be that feud ! may it linger long in the land to 
perpetuate this grand old image of by-gone ages! May imprecations 
fall upon his head who shall raise his axe in desecration of this sacred 
temple of the gods ! The area of this forest covers in all about ten 
acres, in an oblong square reaching "from y^ top of y'' mounting known 
as y^ Sharrapaug Mounting, downways to y brooke w'h y^ same is 
known as y'^ Saw Mill brooke, and bounded on y^ north syde by Eze- 
kiel Freeman his new meddy fence and on y^ south syde by a lyne from 
y'^ branded tree near y^ white rock on y'^ top of s'd mounting, along 
downways by y<= divition of Indione landes w'h y'^ same is in y*^ hands 
of y^ committy for to trade on with s'd Indiones, and downways again 
by y^ boundary, w'h y-' same can be found in y<^ deed of Ziby Prindle 
his pitch. 

" Test. Simeon Torrey, Clerkr 

So, in its quaint fashion, states the old town record, in which from year 
to year there is frequent mention of " y^ s'd pitch," which latter word 
I gathered to mean that particular bit of land which any townsman 
should " pitch in " to secure or select whereon to " pitch his tent." 
There are also queer accounts of " meatings of y'= proprietors of y^ 
towne of Trumbull legally meet att y^ house of jotham nichols in y^ s'd 
town ;" and one feels a sense of reproach toward a scribe who should 
thus refuse his fellow-townsman even the ordinary courtesy and dignity 
of the proper noun ; but how quickly is that unjust aspersion dispelled 
by that revelation of charming modesty below ! where we discover the 
same name thus inscribed, "Test, jotham nichols, clerk." The "meat- 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



29 



ings " in question were those connected with the project of this very 
road, which, owing to the prospects of its heavy tax levy — involv- 
ing as it did the further purchase of a considerable tract of Indian 
land — had stirred the county for miles around in a long and exciting 
controversy. 

We learn that it was " voated down " by popular clamor at the time. 
But a farther search among those tattered pages reveals the existence of a 
rarely level-headed Puritan ancestry, and as generous a type of hospitality 
as ever turned the tables in the political campaigns of their illustrious 
posterity. Here, under date of December 30, 171 2, we read as follows: 
" The inhabitants Aforesd made choyce of Ezekiel Freeman and Jere- 
miah Turney a committy for To measure y lande and settle y<^ boundes 
With Y Indiones, and also to procure four Gallons of rume to treate y^ 
indiones and to refresh ymselves, & charge y^ Townes debter for y« 
rume & all other charge & troble necessary in complecting y<= same." 

Under such all -potent influences it need hardly be said that the 
"committy" carried the day. The road was shortly after an accom- 
plished fact ; and it were safe to afifirm that, save upon the pathway of 
this road, no mortal man has ever crossed the boundaries of this wood. 
Not but that he might do it ; but few there are, unless impelled by the 
fever of exploration or scientific research, who would care to penetrate 
its almost impassable jungle of craggy branches, or its waist-deep bar- 
riers of damp and mouldering debris hidden from sight beneath great 
beds and pillows and domes of light-green fern-moss. 

There is a quarter of a mile of winding drive through this grand old 
aisle ; and when soon again we feel the warm air floating in from the 
outer world, it is to look ahead, as through a great Gothic portal, where 
opens up a charming contrast of sunny road, winding along among idyl- 
lic pastoral scenes, of sunny cottages peeping out among the trees, of 
thrifty farms and fields of grain, and pleasant sounds of rural life and 
husbandry, and, surmounting all, a distance of magnificent sublimity, 
where lofty mountain -slopes softly mottled with gliding shadows loojn 
up on every side, with here a pine -clad crest sharply cut against a 
hovering, sunlit cloud, and there a rugged peak, lost in the blue and 
hazy gloom of some majestic, luminous pile that seems to have stopped 
in its airy journey to rest and linger lovingly upon the towering sum- 
mit, cooling and sheltering the sun -scorched brow in the depths of 
its refreshing shadow. And how exquisite the gliding grace of that 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



pearly shadow as it floats and paints its ceaseless changes across the 
landscape! Now sliding down the wooded mountain, taking by surprise 




• GOSSIP AND IWITTER. 



some isolated clump of hemlocks that start out dark and eloomv from 
their obscurity; now stealing unawares upon some laughing water-fall, 



ALONG THE ROAD. 31 

whose roguish winking is changed to a sober frown. And now it 
creeps upon the edge of yonder field of daisies : see them toss and frolic 
in this respite from the scorching heat ; and how cjuickly are they left 
again to burst forth in their silvery waving billows ! The toiling farmer 
among the windrows in the hay -scented field greets the refreshing 
shadow as it passes, and stops to lift his hat and drink in its welcome 
coolness, and the linnet panting with open bill upon the fence near by 
finds heart for a few sweet notes of thanks. 

Yonder distant mountain, which but a moment ago was luminous in 
sunlight, is now a deep-blue mystery ; and against its lurid expanse, as 
if it were a lowering sky, the village cupolas and gables seem to dance 
like sunny white caps in their sea of waving elms and maples, with here 
and there a jutting spire and flashing weather-vane gleaming like an 
illumined light -house, and glittering flocks of pigeons, too, that seem 
less like doves than sporting gulls. Were you to ask this youngster 
who now approaches you on the road, seated on a pile of meal -bags 
whose weight bears down the sag of his long span buckboard nearly 
to the turf — it will surely run aground upon the next full thank-you- 
marm — but were you to ask him the name of this charming town, whose 
homes are now so thickly sprinkled among the roadside farms, he would 
doubtless tell you that this is " East Trumble," and that farther along, 
over the bridge, you would come to " Trumble Centre." We have not 
long since passed " Trumbull Four-Corners " (probably referring to the 
rectangles of the single house or barn in the township), and you may 
be perfectly sure that before your ride is finished you will have enjoyed 
the sejoarate attractions of Trumbull proper, Trumbull Station, Trum- 
bull Junction, West Trumbull, and perhaps lots of other little Trum- 
bulls — Trumbull Mills, possibly, or Trumbull's Falls. And if you only 
inquire along the way during the next hour, you will have- the name of 
that beautiful little town beyond as firmly impressed on your memory 
as are the ever-changing pictures of its lanes and roadsides. 

But now all sight of its gables and steeples has left us, having 
dodged behind a jutting grove of maples, birches, and beeches, beneath 
whose canopy we are soon winding, where the road is carpeted far 
ahead in sidelong bands of sunlight, and gently moving shadows play 
among the branches and the mottled tree -trunks. Here we are sud- 
denly walled in by tall precipices of rock hanging full with trickling 
ferns that nod and jump with the falling drops from the bursting 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 




springs among its crevices, 
where trailing garlands of ad- 
lumia drape the rugged sur- 
face in graceful arabesques, 
looping its airy fringe from 
crag to crag, and throwing a 



tender green 
the 



THE SVVAYINC. SHADOW. 



bower of its 

above the laurels and 

overhanging shrubbery. 

And when we once more 
emerge into the open light it 
is to creep along where hazel 
thickets crowd close upon our 
wheels, and great tall wreaths 
of hiorh-vine bramble bend be- 
neath their weight of purple 
fruit. If you notice your 
pony now you will see him 
prick up his ears for some 
little surprise he has learned 
to expect from among this 
roadside jungle. 

Perhaps it is a little blue- 
eyed maiden who suddenly 
appears from her obscurity. 
She holds in her uplifted 
hands a small tray of tiny 
birch-bark baskets piled full of 
choice selected fruit. " Would 
you like some blackberries, 
sir T' she will say, with a 
sweetly modulated voice and 
a charming pink blush, whose 
combined effect cannot but 
arouse every spark of your 
latent gallantry ; and of course 
you leave her with an empty 
tray, smiling and happy as she 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



2>l 



counts her little handful of your pennies. Or perhaps it is those two 
everlasting boys, announced by the racket of their tin pails, who ap- 
proach with anxious faces to tell you that your horse has "got a bone 
in his leg " or a " nail iji his foot." And you are quite willing that such 
a serious misfortune should afiflict him, if only to afford the glimpse of the 
convulsive pleasure it awakens in those ruddy, berry-stained faces beneath 
their broad straw hats. I can see those luminous little faces now, with 
their healthful color all aglow and beaming, from the golden radiance 
which shone down upon them from those sunlit hat-brims ; and distinctly 
do I hear those clinking pails, the merry giggle, and the thud, thud of 
the little, tough bare feet trotting out of sight along the dusty road. 

The element of surprise becomes an incessant forecast along one of 
these roads. If it is even a rustic conversation within ear-shot of the 
highway, it is sure to furnish its item of the unexpected, either to arrest 
your attention or arouse your curiosity. 

" Say, Chauncey," I remember hearing in a yell across a potato-patch, 
"wen iz thet -sec ftinerul a-cummin' off.''" Or, on another occasion, a 
choice selection reserved for my especial benefit in an evening talk over 
the front picket-fence, presumably about a new yoke of steers : 

" Wa'al, no, he ain't ezacly contrery ; but t'uther's willin' to haul it, 
'n' he's pleggy willin' he shtid ; 'n' how he doos haul ! Gret guns ! I 
wished yeu cud jest run up 'n' see him. I vaow, his eyes stick aout so's 
yeu cud hang yer hat on to "um." 

I had listened one day for a good, half-hour to a long harangue that 
in some way came as a natural consequence to my simple question, 
" Neighbor, can you tell me what place this is ?" 

" Trumbull Four Corners," he replied ; and then followed — how I 
don't exactly remember, but it came as a matter of course — that long, 
one - sided conversation, full of remarkable achievements in the way of 
trappin', fishin', and fox-huntin', till at length I glanced at my watch, 
and, gathering up the reins, concluded to cut it short. 

" Well, neighbor," said I, good-naturedly, at m.y first chance to get in 
a word, " there's one thing that you certainly know how to do, and that 
is entertain^ But he was sharp enough to detect a possible hidden 
intention in the word. 

" Wa'al," he immediately replied, while a broad smile started at his 
mouth and gradually spread all over among the wrinkles of his good- 
natured face, " I cal'late you're ez gud ez thet ar /ie7i yender, ain't ye V 

3 



34 HIGHWAYS AND BY WAYS. 

" Am I to take that as a gentle hint for me to ' scratch gravel ?' "' I 
inquired, getting ready to start. 

"Not 'tall, not 'tall,'" replied -he, deprecatingly. "But naow jest look 
on't: thet ar hen hez gut a lot o' szvccpiiis thar, but she knows enuff t' 
pick aout the kernels '«' leave the chaffr 

" Perhaps there are no kernels," suggested I, thoughtfully. 

" Ah, the kernels is thar, I'm thinkin'," he continued, with a knowing 
look. " They're thar, er else she wudn't a be a-wastin on her vallable 
time, yeu kin depend on't." 

Talk of the characteristic blurting propensities of the blunt New 
Englander ! I have known a " blunt New Englander " to give a home- 
thrust couched in satire the keenest and most subtle, and which came 
as naturally as his very breath. 

In all my experience I fail to recall a single instance of such a con- 
versation which has not been characterized by some rare bit of homely 
wisdom, some rich outcropping of mother- wit, or remarkable develop- 
ment of unique personality. Sometimes, to be sure, "a grain among 
chaff," but more often a continuous stream of bursting bubbles of indi- 
vidual character, almost worthy of stenographic reproduction in its en- 
tirety. The dialect is always fascinating; and while I would not detract 
one jot from the rare humor of many of its sentiments, it must be ad- 
mitted that they often seem to lose half their sparkle when deprived of 
their quaint setting, and transferred to a page of type. For it is not 
alone the dialect; there is the peculiar inflection and intonation, that 
queer, low-down '' ga hunk!" inimitable and indescribably funny, and, 
added to these, gestures so remarkable and unexpected that, after all, 
when written, it seems folly to depict one phase of all this character, 
and leave out perforce so much else that is necessary to enforce it and 
give it true vitality. 

But, while the eye has been charmed by the constant freshness and 
variety of these way-side pictures, there is another subtle influence which 
has softly stolen upon our senses. They have felt its touch and heard 
its music while we listened almost unaware. It is the medley of that 
ever-present hum of rural life, whose harmony floats in the air we 
breathe, and brings new melody with every passing breeze. Perhaps 
the ringing beats of some far-distant scythe, wafted but for a moment, 
and then lost again, or the "cock's shrill clarion" far away. Now it is 
the clinking wheel of some busy mower or reaper, bringing with it a 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



35 



welcome whiff from the scented field, or, again, the mellow cooing of the 
doves upon some neighboring roof — a continuous roundelay, sustained 
and borne along upon a soft, sweet undertone of mingled murmuring 
leaves, the hum of bees, and cricket -songs, and twitterings of a thou- 
sand swallows, all united in one perpetual chord of jubilee. And to 
us " who in sad cities dwell," what a charming contrast it all is from 






'tSF^I 




^c- "^M 






A WELCOME SIGNAL. 



that overwhelming discord of the 
teeming life and whirl of the great 
metropolis, with its perpetual rum- 
'^^^svv bling traffic stirring our very foun- 
dations, and still lingering in one's 
ears ; its muffled mutterings of man- 
ufactures, and rattling presses, and 
quivering pulsations of its great chaos of machinery ; and, beneath all 
this significance of prosperity, its grim records of strife and crime, its 
life-battles lost and won, its fierce and tireless warfare of competition, 
and the feverish desperation of its thousands upon thousands of human 
souls in that great unceasing struggle for existence ! 

How soothing the quiet peace of this New England road ! How 
pleasantly sounds its slightest voice of liberty ! Even this unmusical, 



36 HIGHWAYS AND BY WAYS. 

sleepy grunt from the old way -side pig -pen has in it a welcome 
element of contentment. But wc will stop there. That is all that 
can be said of it. We will take its significance for what it is worth, 
and look no farther for its verity, for there is another more inviting 
picture near. 

See this long bouquet of "bouncing Bet," stramonium, and tansy that 
follows along the foundations of this old gray barn, and that graceful, 
swaying shadow of the plumy golden-rod gliding to and fro upon the 
sunny boards ! Now we hear the cackling of a hen behind those boards, 
and we know she is flying from that snug stolen hollow in the hay-mow. 
Now comes the lowing of the imprisoned cow, answering an echo of 
sympathy from some neighboring barn. 

And hark how the very timbers of that old barn seem tuned in uni- 
son with that call ! how they seem to hold and prolong the sound, until 
it is lost in the perpetual chorus! Perhaps a great ado among some 
flock of ducks. You hear the gurgling rattle of that scolding drake, 
and can almost see his waddle, and the barking dog which is giving him 
such a lively chase. And what is this } The scraping of a pan, that 
magic signal at whose bidding all barn-yard feuds and quarrels are dis- 
pelled, at which the waddling ducks, the husky, hissing geese, and mot- 
ley hens unite in a stampede of mutuality and a chorus of unanimity. 
The regal peacock and the cantankerous Shanghai meet on common 
ground at the scraping of the pan ; and even his majesty the lordly gob- 
bler for a moment forgets his dignity, and condescends to mingle with 
the crowd, and even soil his plumage by an actual jostle against that 
resplendent train, those peerless plumes, at whose rival beauty he is 
even yet so blue in the face. The flock of pigeons, too, whose whistling 
wings betray their coming, have heard that welcome note far up among 
the clouds, and presently we see their nodding heads among the pell- 
mell scramble. 

I remember in one of my Trumbull sketching rambles stopping on 
the road and witnessing some such scene as this. It was in one of 
those picturesque old door-yards, with its glittering tins, its coops, its 
bleaching clothes ; its strings of dried apples festooned against the 
sunny clapboards, and rows of half-colored tomatoes ripening on the 
window-sills, and a hundred other equally insignificant things, by no 
means without their " values," however, either to artist or rural pos- 
sessor ; and as I stood (squinting, I dare say) noting down the relative 




decrees of tone between 

that sun-gleam on the tin pan, 

for instance, and the highest light 

on the white cloth in the grass, 

or contrasting the lights on the 

black garment by its side with the 

depth of tone of the dark door-way of 

the barn, all preliminary to my proposed 



•'f 



sketch — while thus taking notes I remember there was a swinging noise 
of the front gate. I turned and saw a long, swaggering individual 



38 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

walking up the path toward his house ; and there was somethins; in 
his appearance, even in his back view, which immediately appealed to 
my utilitarian impulses, then on the rampage ; and something said 
within me, " More material ; yell at him before he is gone." And I 
yelled, ''Hello, neighbor!" He simply turned and looked at me, await- 
ing some show of reason for my peremptory challenge. And I found 
I had to wait for it myself. At last it came, and I stammered it forth : 
" Can you tell me who owns that thick patch of woods back on the 
road about half a mile .''" 

He turned the right side of his face toward me, with a slight 
forward inclination, as though to listen with his best ear, while a one- 
sided squint lifted up one cheek, completely closing the eye, and at 
the same time disclosing to view through his scanty gray mustache 
two long eye-teeth, the only visible dental ornaments of which he was 
possessed. 

The amount of facial expression capable of being conveyed by the 
human teeth increases in an inverse ratio to their number; and while 
it is usually a gain in quantity at the expense of quality, I have known 
a single tooth to do more duty in this respect than lay within the pos- 
sibilities of a whole mouthful. Such was the case in the instance 
of the present individual. He stood in this position without moving 
a muscle for fully half a minute, and then broke silence in this wise, 
" Ha-a-a-a \T 

I know of no other way adequately to suggest the peculiar intona- 
tion and inflection of this typical New England query. Imagine a man 
with a drawling nasal voice, who for about ten seconds has been striving 
to pronounce the word " hang," and whose breath gives out before he 
can reach the g, and it will in a measure suggest the character of this 
sound, which for some reason seems almost inseparable from a squint or 
some distortion of the face. 

" I was asking if you could tell me who owned those very old woods 
back on the road .?" I repeated. 

"Sure 'nuff — sure 'nuff," replied he, approaching me with a disjointed, 
limping gait, with every footstep giving out a soggy wheeze from his old 
wet boots. " Yeu mean them 2S pines a piece daown the road yender.?" 
continued he, indicating the direction with the open blade of a huge 
jack-knife which he held. 

•' Precisely. Do you know who owns them .''" 



ALONG THE ROAD. 39 

"Wa'al, yis ; shudn't wunder ef I did," he drawled, resuming with 
a satisfied and self-important air — "shudn't wunder ef I did. This 
'ere indiwidooal owns 'um ez much ez ennybody, but et present reck- 
'nin' they ain't nobody in taown but wut owns 'um. I never see sech 
goin's-on ez they iz abaout thet ar piece o' graound. Ye see," con- 
tinued he, settling down an inch or two as he stood, and emphasizing 
his remarks by a sort of double baton movement with his jack-knife- 
blade and outstretched finger — " ye see, my gran\\-\QX wuz the 'riginal 
owner on't, 'n' he gut it in trade from old Scjuire Nathan Sanford, who 
gut it d'rect from the Sharrapaug Injins ; 'n' he gut the deed, teu, with 
all the Injins' marks 'n' sines 'n' sech onto it. — But darn his picter ! the 
pesky old fool ! — Naow, look eeah : I don't make no bones abaout my 
'pinion o' my gran'ther, 'n' everybody knoius on't : he wuz nuthin' but 
a reg'lar old dunce heels, \\ thet's the treuth on't. But thar ! he's ded 
'n' gone, poor feller, 'n' I ain't agoin' to say nuthin' agin the ded ;" and a 
look of penitence would seem to close in around those two teeth. " But, 
ye see, he held thet ar deed, 'n' the pesky old fool never knowed enuff 
to git it recorded, 'n' wuz so 'tarnal shifless thet he ended in goin' 'n' 
losin' on't, er hidin' on't, er suthin'; leastwise they hain't never seen hide 
ner hair on't sence, 'n' they hez bin more spiteful cjuarrellin' 'n' fitin' 
cum by thet consarned idjit then hiz hide wuz wuth. But thar !" said 
he, after a moment's hesitation, with the same look of pseudo-penitence 
lurking behind that thin mustache, "he's ded 'n' gone, poor feller, 'n' I 
ain't one o' them az iz goin' to say anythin' agin the ded." 

During this latter refrain I had noticed that his eyes were restlessly 
scanning the ground around where he stood, when suddenly, in a mar- 
vellous fashion, he hung himself over the top of the tall picket-fence, 
and picked up something on the ground outside. It was a long pine 
stick lying at the edge of the road, with one end embedded in a mud- 
puddle. He turned it over, looked at it as if in deep thought, wiped 
the muddy end in his long gray hair, and finished the process on his 
shirt-sleeve, and then with his newly-ground blade took off one long, 
thin, curling shaving along its entire length. 

" That was rather unfortunate for his descendants, I should imag- 
ine V suggested I, resuming. 

" Unfortnit ! shudn't wunder ef it wuz. 'Twas a 'tarnal sight wuss : 
'twas a cu'ss, thet's wut it wuz. Thet ar piece mite 'a bin a putty 
prop'ty fer sum 'un ; but naow haow is't } Wy, the only legicy wut 



40 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



thct old fool hez left iz a pesky shindig ez keeps this 'ere taown 
a-fitin' tlie hull year roun'. I vaow, he wuz a reg'lar old dunce heels, 
thet's wilt he wuz; he wa'n't good fer nuthin' nohaow." 




ENOCH EMMONS. 



This was the second use ' ' 
of that peculiar epithet, and 
it had already aroused my curiosity. 

"What on earth is a djince heels?'''' 
I inquired, in order better to under- 
stand its significance. 
At this query he came along the fence in silence, with a loose, limp- 
ing gait, and with his finger raised in evident thought as to how best 
explain the term; and the eager alacrity with which he threw his long 
les: over those bars and landed himself on the other side showed conclu- 
sively that he had solved the problem. 

'• Wa'al, naow," he resumed, slowly, leaning back against the bars, 



ALONG THE ROAD. 4I 

and drawing in his vertebrae about six inches, " I take it a dunce iz a 
feller wut hain't gut no brains into 'im, ain't he ?" 

I assented. 

" Ver' good. Wa'al, then, a dunce iz bad enuff, fer grashis sake, 'n' 
wen ye git daown teu his heels — I cal'late a dunce's heel iz abaout ez 
low ez yeu kin git, ain't it .? — 'nless he wuz a-standin' on his hed — but, 
gudness 'n' treuth ! this ar preshis gran'ther o' mine cud 'a swopped 
'n' never known the difference 'ntil he eum teu his hat. But thar ! he's 
ded 'n' gone, poor feller, 'n' I ain't one o' them ez iz goin' teu quarrel 
with the ded. But ye see they wa'n't nobody in taown but wut hated 
the old rarskle, 'n' them ez didn't I swaou they wuz them kind ez orter 
bin in jail. Lie! Gret Grimes! haow he wud lie! I don't blame ye 
fer lafifin', stranger, but I wisht yeu cud 'a seen him yerself. But thar !" 
he added, deprecatingly, with uplifted hand, " I ain't agoin' to say 
nothin' agin 'im ; he's ded this twenty year, 'n' hez hed his fin'l reck- 
'nin', I hain't a daoubt, 'n' 'tain't fer me teu be a-rakin' uv 'im up." 

" My friend," said I, grasping an opportune occasion for a little 
home-missionary work, and with a latent hope, perhaps, of drawing out 
some racy moral developments, " there's an old Latin saying which goes 
in this wise, '^ De tnorttiis nil nisi bomim! Did you ever hear it.''" 

"Wut is't .?" queried he, eagerly, with that same one-sided squint 
and tilted ear. " Jest say thet ar agin, will ye ?" 

I repeated the quotation, and asked again if he ever heard it. 

" Yis, I hev," answered he immediately, much to my surprise, for I 
had anticipated the probable necessity of its translation, " I thort it 
sounded kinder nateral like wen I fust heern ye ; fer that's jest wut 
Deac'n Stiles Tomlinson, our gret meetin' man, sed to me one day a 
spell ago, wen we wuz hevin' a leetle speritooal talk over the meddy 
fence, like we hez sometimes; but I hain't gut no book-larnin' ner 
nuthin' like him, 'n' he tole me wut the mcanin' ont wuz ; 'n' I jes' tole 
him, sez I, thet the idee wuz a gud 'tin; but haow wuz it, sez I, when 
they wa'n't no gud into 'im wut ennybody could ex&r Jind aout? 'n' I 
wa'n't agoin' teu commit no sin by lyiii like the devil jest to say suthin' 
gud abaout 'im ; — 'n' I notis he wuz kinder quiet like wen I lit aout like 
thet, 'n' I notis haow he didn't hev no tcx reddy nuther. Cuz wy.? — 
cuz he sed into himself, sez he, ' I cal'late you're rite.' I know'd he 
thort it, fer Deac'n Tomlinson ain't no fool ef he iz a meetin' man, 'n' he 
hed his little bone teu pick with thet old thief jest like the rest on 'um. 



42 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

But thar ! gudncss 'n' trciitJi ! I don't want tcu say nothin' agin the old 
feller; he's ded 'n" gone, "n' thet's the end ox\\y 

" Were any of your grandfather's peculiarities hereditary in the fam- 
ily?" I incjuired, with some show of interest. 

" Not by a gret site," said he, emphatically; "he wuz a pesky mildew 
on the Emmons pedigree, 'n' everybody knon's on"t." 

"What did your venerable ancestor die of?" I inquired farther, with 
as much melancholy solicitude as I could muster. 

"Wa'al, the medicle men give aout thct it wuz consumption, but 
gudness knows they wa"n"t never cnnff on him fer consumption teu take 
a hold on. I 'spect thet it reely wuz a sorter lingerin' brekin' up o" the 
body, 'n' tord the last the doctors killed him off ; fer he hed a site on 
'em, 'n' took a drefHe lot o' stuff, 'n' none on't ever done 'im a mossel 
o' good. He got wusser 'n' wusser arter the doctors cum, 'n' I alliz sed 
they killed him, 'n' I sed ez much tcu Dr. Farchild et the funerul ; fer 
I tole him then thet they wuz more weight o pizcii thar than anythin' 
else, "n' we hain't swopped a word sence, 'n' thet's nigh cum twenty 
year." 

During all this jargon the pine stick had gradually dwindled down 
long and trim, and at this point he raised it to his eye and took a 
squint along its length. 

"What are you going to make out of that?" I naturally inquired. 

"Oh, nawth'n pertickler," he drawled; "but, ye see, I make it Ti. pint 
alliz teu be a-dewiii suthin' 'ruther, 'n' never t" be a-wastin' on mv time. 
It's drefifle curus, naow, but they iz fokes wut — " 

He stopped short, for a quick slam of a window -sash interrupted 
him. He turned his head, with a start, and in so doing threw toward 
me a ball of mud from his loose gray hair, while from the neighborhood 
of the tins at the pantry window there came a sharp, shrill voice : 

"Enoch Emmons, didn't I tell yeu teu fi.x them bars? Thar's the 
old speckle caoiu in the corn agin, 'n' I sed it wud be jcs so ;" and then 
came another slam, which not only shut the window, but completely 
shut off this stream of tender reminiscence. 

" Oh yis," he muttered, " sum fokes doos know a drefifle pile !" and, 
with a comical wink, he threw away his stick among the brambles, shut 
his jack-knife with a snap, and, with a parting nod, dragged his soggy 
boots in wheezing steps toward the house. 

There arc numerous just such mines along this highway, if you only 



ALONG THE ROAD. 43 

care to " work "' them. In some the gold, like tempting " placers," lies 
all in sight. You can see it glistening on the surface, and it can be 
had even without an effort ; but often it is hidden beneath a rough and 
stern exterior that must needs be explored. 

But erelong another mile has passed, and now the smile of humor 
has died away, replaced by a sentiment of reverence as you enter the 
limits of quaint Old Trumbull, and are passing beneath its grand old 
trees. 

There is a sense of awe and loneliness that steals upon }ou as you 
turn into its long street. And what is that strange impulse- which draws 
the rein, that you may pass slowly and quietly upon its thoroughfare t 
You look ahead perhaps for half a mile upon its deserted street, straight 
and broad, and silent as the grave. The high -grown grass has long 
since closed in upon its old-time wheel-ruts. The canopy of aged elms 
o'erhead throws a deep and melancholy shadow beneath, in which those 
grim and sombre houses, mouldy, gray, and moss-grown, seem almost 
sepulchral in their strange stillness ; and, while the sense of death is far 
from your thought, those tight -closed doors, those dank and mildewed 
bushes, and windows dark and mysterious, give more thfe impress of the 
tomb than token of the living. You may look long and searchingly, 
but not a glimpse of human life will arrest your gaze, nor a single living 
sound break upon that oppressive silence. 

Perhaps, however, if you care to scan still closer the shadows of 
those small panes — if you would seek to know the secret of their mys- 
terious gloom — you might discover that aged, wrinkled face beneath its 
rufHed cap, with those kindly eyes lost in reverie, looking dreamily out 
of the window, perhaps at the rude-fashioned weather-vane upon the old 
barn gable, carved with boyish hands long years ago. But it no longer 
turns upon its pivot; it is still; it will never point again but to the 
joys, the deep sorrows, and the loved associations of years that never 
will return. 

Or is it that hanging remnant of a dove-cot near the eaves that 
brings those silent tears which course down those furrowed cheeks, and 
fall upon the open book .f" The dove-cot is not there — nothing but that 
mouldering fragment clinging to its rusty nail. But yes, there is a dove- 
cot there, for it sends its doves in scores and flocks laden with mes- 
sages of a mothers love and blessing. They seek the crowded thor- 
oughfares and busy marts of far-off cities, across the plains, from ocean 



44 



IIJGJIIVAYS AND BYWAYS. 



to ocean ; for there are many who still look back with yearning and 
with longing to this old play-ground, and who recall, in many an earnest 
prayer, the sacred, hallowed sweetness of that dear old wrinkkd face. 







,-•?> 



A WAY-SIIJE BARGAIN. 



How c|uickly does 
that forbidding gloom and 
mystery melt away under the 
influence of a single revelation such 
as this ! But it is not a mere speculation nor a fantasy ; it is the heart 
history of nearly every house we pass upon this silent street. Serene 
and blessed people, who dream away the later years of life in tranciuil 
reverie. 

But that dreamy influence is not confined beneath these mossy roofs. 
The very air is languid with its presence, and it has lulled the land- 
scape into drowsiness, now and then half aroused, perhaps, by the lazy 



ALONG THE ROAD. 45 

cackle of a hen, which is often the only solitary sound of life that will 
greet your ear in the entire length of this thoroughfare ; but even she 
is half asleep, and you instinctively imagine her, with closed eyes and 
drooping wings, toppling over in some sunny corner of the barnyard. . 

It is pleasant to note, however, that this monotony is sometimes 
varied, for in that open belfry yonder among the elms there reposes a 
power whose lightest touch is sure to fill this quiet town with renewed 
life and interest. The Sabbath-morning bell is the life of Old Trumbull. 
No more are its shadows shrouded in mystery. There are sounds of 
opening doors and windows, slow footfalls on the wooden walks, low, 
lisping voices and kindly greetings at every gate. Queer old rattling 
wagons jog along up and down the street, and the way-side hitching- 
posts soon present their long, continuous line of muddy vehicles, sleepy- 
looking horses, and of course those whisking tails. There is a strangely 
sweet influence in this Sabbath calm; and erelong, as you look across 
at that little church, you will find yourself lost in thought, and listening 
with a touch of sadness, as those dear, familiar strains of old " Lenox " 
or " Dundee " float out among the vaulted elms. 

Or perhaps even on some week-day you might chance upon that old 
tin-peddler going his regular round of gossip and trade. If so, you will 
certainly halt a moment to take a look at his remarkable turn-out — a sort 
of peripatetic junk-shop and circus -wagon combined, with brooms and 
feather-dusters towering up like plumes above ; with glittering tins and 
pans, and huge bursting rag-bag tied on behind, and an endless variety 
of choice worldly goods stowed away out of sight. It is as good as 
a circus, too, to hear him descant, as I did once, upon the great virtues 
of Mother Morton's ""Cherry Pictorial^' "a sure and sartin cure fcr all 
affectations of the liver and the lungs." 

Or maybe it is a skilful estimate of the saving of the backbone in 
the use of the "Acme," Sparback's latest improved, extra-super-double- 
sided zinc-fluted washboard. "Acme!" — mystic word! How insignifi- 
cant is that pile of rags in the garret when pitted against such a lovely 
household gem ! Thus, at least, would you read the sentiment of the 
enraptured customer, from a glance at her expression. She is not 
long in deciding. " Ef they'z rags enuff, Mr. Spink, I b'leeve I'll trade 
fer it." He follows her into the house, and, after spending ten minutes 
in the sitting-room in friendly gossip, re-appears tugging the bag of rags. 
They are weighed ; they kick the beam and to spare ; the " Acme " be- 



46 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

comes her priceless treasure, and there is still eleven cents clue her, 
which she takes out in " a cake o' soap fer the spar-chamber, a dough- 
nut-cutter, a ball o' wickin', 'n' the rest in skein cotton." 

The New England tin-peddler is usually a genuine Yankee, of the 
lengthy, swivel-jointed type; and it is well for him that he is, for none 
but a nimble figure could clamber in safety up and down from that 
lofty perch, as he is doing from morn till night. 

Under the title of Old Trumbull I have here given a sketch of an 
old New England town just as I have often seen it in its more tranquil 
moods ; but how easily might it claim the title of Old Hadley or a hun- 
dred other venerable New England villages of our Pilgrim ancestry ! 
Their, sons are scattered in every State and city of the Union. How 
many an old resident could tell the same story as was recited to me by 
an ajjed inhabitant of the above town! He had eisfht sons livina;; five 
of them had left the old home to strike out in the w-orld. One was 
a banker in San Francisco ; another had gone out among the mines of 
Colorado, and had made a " gret success ;"' and one was " into Congress 
daown to Wushin'ton." " In the summer-time me "n" Phebe likes to 
come up 'n' stay et the old home ; but in the winter we go daown to 
York teu \isit with our son John, who is into politics, ';/' doiii ivell T 
Innocent old soul! His other three sons had bought land over, the 
river in New Trumbull, and were the " likeliest farmers in the caounty." 
And thus the new town has been built up. It is the home of the new 
generation. It has its bank, its opera-house, its handsome dwellings and 
close-clipped lawns, large academies, and new stone churches with velvet- 
cushioned seats and illuminated windows. Two laro;e hotels attract the 
annual hcgira from the cities, and the streets are gay with their car- 
riages and fashionable equipages. 

There are three ways of crossing the river from the old to the new 
town. The most direct is by the ancient rope -ferry, but you can also 
take the toll -bridge or the ford, and you generally end by trying all 
three. The rope-ferry is, perhaps, the most novel, and when you reach 
the water's edge you look in vain for any sign of ferry conveyance. 
But soon you will espy the long tin horn hanging on the post near 
by, and a single blast will bring the old flat-boat across the river. And 
as you glide out into the current it is pleasant to listen to the slapping 
of the water beneath the broad ends, or the rustlins: of the weeds and 
lily-pads beneath the bottom; and you feel almost a pathetic interest 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



47 



in that stooping but swarthy old man, as he pulls upon the submerged 
wire cable which lifts from the river-bed its dripping eel -grass, and 
rattles along the pulleys at the edge of the boat. 

For thirty years this old ferryman has done duty at this crossing, 
living in that little cottage at the water's edge. He has been deaf this 
many a year. You will yell long and loud before that face will show 
an expression of comprehension, but the sound of the old tin horn is 
sure to find an echo in some sympathetic chord beneath that silent 
sense ; for he will tell you that he does not hear it, and will add, " I 
kinder feel it inside, \\ I jes' drop my spade "n' run, 'n' theys alwuz 
some 'un than" 

If you ever find yourself doubting which road to take when in quest 
of a pleasant drive, it is always safe to conclude upon the " river road." 
It may lack the elements of broad panoramic views, with hazy hills 
melting away into the distant blue horizon. It probably will. But 




THE TOLL-BRIDGE. 



they will be replaced by other pictures which will come much closer to 
you, while you will also be sure to find many of the same features com- 
mon to the " mountain road " and other roads. Their trickling clif¥s, 
with their nodding columbines and mountain laurels; their way-side 
thickets of sumac, elders, mountain raspberry, and moose-wood, with its 
large heart-shaped leaves, so checkered, splashed, and blotched with crim- 
son, as though painted by the falling drops of " red ink " from those 
poke -berries hanging in such long clusters above them. You will be 



48 HIGH IV A YS A ND fi Y JFA YS. 

sure to creep along the edge of that field of clover, timothy, and purple 
grasses, with its nodding lilies and its dusty milk-weeds; you will see 
the mowers swung their scythes ; and you will watch and laugh again 
and asain at the fjushincr ardor of those comical bobolinks fluttering 
through the air in their pell-mell rhapsody, and dropping exhausted in 
the grass, or alighting, out of breath, upon the jutting fence-rail. 

And then you will leave the darkness of some hemlock-grove to open 
out upon that old rickety toll-bridge which we all remember. At your 
approach a cjueer little old man will appear, stepping lazily from his 
door-way near the end of the bridge, and perhaps also his pretty, red- 
lipped, buxom daughter; and you will be certain to look to and fro from 
one to the other in utter amazement at such a possible freak of nature. 
If it is he, he will look you over, and take you all in through his big 
blue sossfles in his own s^ood time ; and should he be the little dried-up 
old specimen that 1 remember, he will then remark, with outstretched 
claw, " They's three on ye, caountin' the boss — fifteen cents." Or if it 
is she — Ah ! how shall I describe her ? How welcome the contrast of 
that small pink palm ! How soft and brown the roguish eyes, looking 
out beneath the shadow of that shapely, sunlit hand ! " Fifteen cents, 
if you please." A voice from a rose-bud! Alas! did ever such lend 
itself to words more commonplace? And, by-the-way, while you are 
fumbling so absently for the change — if you will permit a friendly sug- 
gestion — you would make a much more expeditious matter of it were 
you to fix your eyes more closely upon your pocket-book, and less upon 
those moist, red lips and those white teeth and the golden-brown of that 
flowing, sunny hair. I have said "it is always safe to take the river 
road," but perhaps I spoke unguardedly. Remembering the trite adage, 
"Do not cross the bridge until you come to it."- I had forgotten that 
the old toll-bridge, however rickety or perilous, may have its greatest 
danger even at the threshold. But, in spite of all, who would not pay 
toll at such a threshold ? 

Passing on to the bridge — if you will be so good as to look this 
way — here are the same flashing sun reflections glinting upward through 
the cracks from the rushing ripples below, at which your "boss" is sure 
to bend his neck and prick up his ears while stepping gingerly on the 
loose, flopping boards. And now a white-breasted phcebe-bird flies up 
from beneath and perches on the jutting timbers; but he shows no sign 
of fear — indeed, will even lift his little wing and preen his feathers as 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



49 



you pass. He has heard those noisy, flopping boards since first he 
pipped his shell, and so did his parents before him. And there is even 
now a little mate sitting upon a nestful of snow-white eggs, perhaps 
directly beneath your wheels, on some mud -plastered shelf or cranny 
among the beams. And what a romantic little life is hers, with the 
sound of the rushing water ever in her ears, and suspended between 
two such beautiful living pictures up and down the river, enclosed within 
the frames of those overhanging planks and huge stone piers ! 

As you near the farther end of the bridge the water becomes still 
and dark. If you should stand and peep 
over the edge into the depths below, •^.^ - ♦*v^j( 
you might see the flash of some 
shining dace or minnow 
sporting in the water, 
or perhaps by care- 
ful search among 
those weeds near- ^' 
er the bank you 
might disco V- ^ 

er that slv , ■' 







FRIENDLY COUNSEL. 



pickerel, with his nose just out of water, among 
the floating hearts and eel-grass. The screeching kingfisher will be sure 
to pay you a call in his regular round, alighting on that craggy willow- 
branch half-hidden by its clambering grape-vine. He too will watch for 
that silvery gleam down in the water, perhaps make a dive and splash, 
and, glancing upward, pass on screeching beneath you to try again from 
his next perch below the bridge. 

And here comes that funny little " teenter bird," always off his bal- 
ance, bobbing and tipping on his slender legs as he runs along the edge 
of the gravelly beach. And if he comes within your reach just throw 

4 



50 



HIGinVAYS AND BilFAi'S. 



a stone or two at him, and see how queerly he will behave. Most birds 
would find in such a reception a forcible hint to move on; but this 
little creature seems as much off his balance in his intellect as in his 




■--c ■':•) I^SoF^-Z^Tr^:, 



TS^^fM^' 






V:3^g^,p|^-., ■ gait, for he will fly and 



^^1 



\^'- 






FOLLOWING THE RIPPLE. 



chirp and flutter around that 
stone without an idea of his danger. 
And before you leave those rumbling 
timbers you cannot help but take a 
look at that thrifty bordering of the 
river-bank, with its rich confusion of purple eupatoriums and iron-weed, 
its lush green arrow-heads and pickerel -weed, and its tangle of knot- 
weeds, tear-thumbs, and touch-me-nots, overgrown and meshed with 
threads of golden dodder. If you were to throw another stone among 
that outburst you would be sure to hear and smile at the scores of 
tiny exclamations, followed by the successive plunges, of those spotted 
leopard frogs which you may be sure arc hidden among those dark, 
cool shadows. 

Now, if you choose, you can turn directly along the sandy road 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



51 



which follows that winding river, passing beneath the shade of huge 
giant buttonwoods — the kaleidoscopes among trees — whose perpetual 
shaling bark paints their trunks with ever- changing motlings. See 
the fresh green blotch from which only a moment ago a curly flake 
has fallen. In a few days it will have become sobered into a tender 
gray, and the loose brown piece which hangs along its edge will crackle 
and fall, carrying with it that hidden tuft of spider-eggs, and bringing to 
full view that white blotch which even now shows beneath its shadow. 
And this same process is continued more or less throughout the year, 
from its huge stem clear to the branch tips, and there is a new set of 
tints with almost every month. 

Here your attention will be arrested but in mid-stream, perhaps, by 
the sound of low voices or rattle of an oar among some party of an- 
glers anchored in the stream. You can see the bobber dance upon the 
ripi^les, and if you look very sharply you can almost detect that tiny 
dragon-fly, the little blue-bodied sunbeam, which is certainly fluttering 
about on its filmy rainbow wings above the water, now settling lightly 
upon the rowlock, or even poising to thread that pendent fish-line with 
its bright metallic needle. You can hear the flip, flap of the running 
waves beneath those flat bows ; and now there is a rising tumult in the 
water, a sun-flash, a spattering, and a wriggling, and now a flopping on 
the bottom of the boat. You had forgotten your carriage ; your whip 
becomes a fish-pole on the instant ; it is raised with a snap — and away 
starts your pony through the low -hanging willows that sweep across 
your face. Suddenly they let you out again upon a stretch of deep 
white sand, where nimble tiger- beetles rise and glisten in their short 
flights before you, and your very ears seem to vibrate with the dizzy, 
busy buzz of cricket life among the road-side weeds and sedges. We 
will not forget that green-eyed horse-fly, nor the swarm of huge mos- 
quitoes, with their striped stockings and their tremendous thirst, nor that 
friendly counsel from over a road-side fence, as we hesitated at the ford : 

" Ye want to start in jest whar ye see thet ar' stun stickin' aout o' 
water, 'n' then folly the ripple right araound. Keep clus into it, "n' ye 
can't go wrong; 'n" ef I wuz yen I sh'd jes' be gittin' right along, fer 
I'm cal'latin' we're a-goin' to get a leetle tech o' rain aout o' thet ar' 
claoud, 'n' the ripples all goes in the rain." 

There are a hundred other things which come crowdincr on the 
thought as my fancy follows this familiar road. There was a splash in 



52 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

a puddle, where every drop seemed to gi\'e birtli to a score of yellow 
butterflies that flew up about us in a fluttering swarm; a row of twit- 
tering swallows on a wire ; a rumbling, top-heavy 
stage-coach, with six galloping horses, and cheer- 
ing crowd up aloft, dodging beneath the maple 
-^ branches ; or a friendly chat with the quaint old 
^v village doctor in his ancient one -boss shay. 
There was a luscious quaff of wine from the. 
purple clusters of wild cherries, picked from the 
carriage from an overhanging bough ; and other 
little pleasantries. That tight -drawn spider- 
web, for instance, that cut and snapped across 
\-our face ; that clumsy, rattle-jointed grass- 
hopper which bumped against your 
cheek, and landed kicking in your 
lap; or perhaps a wriggling inch- 
worm, who has hung himself 
for amusement, swinging di- 
rectly in your path, awaiting 
what would seem to be the am- 
bition of his life, an opportunity to 
measure the length of your nose 
— and which he actually did. 
are all trivial, I know; 




: . ^Vl'^v^;^^^V^^'\ Yes, they 



-■1:-^;; ;<■*'. ' 




VESPER Sl'ARRlAV. 



but then how large a place do such small trifles hold in the grand 
total of a summer's holiday ! Months later, mark me well, you will spin 
that silken spider-web into many a thread of pleasant fancy; you will 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



53 



remember alone the generosity of that old " Quaker" in the molasses 
that he left you ; and that dangling caterpillar will have lost its uncouth 
garb, and will flit before you as a painted butterfly. For it is, after all, 
the memory of the ludicrous, of the plights and sorry situations, that 
brings the brightest smiles of reverie and the jolliest laughs of reminis- 
cence. Of a missing wheel in deep mid-stream at the ford, perhaps, 
with a precious wagonful of screaming womanhood confided to your 
care ; of a huge black snake at the picnic's festive spread ; of a jolly 
boat-load stuck upon the muddy bottom among the lily-pads ; you will 
remember your outstretched oar, and your heroic push at the tiller, and 
the sudden choice thus forced upon you between your foothold and the 
oar, and its resultant splash of enforced impartiality. Or there was a 
seat at the edge of the boat which you might remember — if you could ; 
but somehow it wasn't there when that sudden lurch caused you to seek 
it, and that half-drowned struggle among those lines and fish-poles, and 
that murderous bass-hook in your thigh, were scarcely funny then ; but 
how has it been since .'' You have had more positive enjoyment from 
that " catch," I'll warrant, than from any five-pound bass that ever had 
your place. 

But even the loveliest road in New England would ere long, I fear, 
find its limit in our capacity of enjoyment. The eye is often surfeited 
and the mind confused at the endless pageantry, and unless the shadows 
of the twilight come to our rescue there is danger that it may at length 
prove a tedious journey. Then let the restful quiet of the gathering 
darkness fall upon our roadway as we have so often seen it, when the 
dusky gloom veiled the landscape in obscurity, and our path ahead was 
lost in a glamour of vague, impenetrable mystery. 

The air is still. The sheltered spots among the lowlands and the 
alders are white and ghostly with their gathering fog. Even in the 
dimness we can see it floating and creeping among the willows, where 
the gurgling water gives it birth, and launches it among the bogs and 
sedges. How still and motionless the leaves ! Not even a sood-nisht 
whisper from the aspen-trees. The gnats are dancing in the quiet air. 
We cannot see them, but we hear their sinafina; wings. The risino- mist 
has stolen close about us : we feel its chill, and it has become redolent 
with the damp odors of the brooks and marshes, while now and then 
there steals upon the senses that delicate dew-born perfume, the faint 







pure breath from some awaken- 
ing primrose, lighting its pale 
yellow lamp amid the gloaming, 
iads of the pond, enshrouded in their veil of 
mist, have long since gone to rest ; and could 

our eyes but penetrate the dim shadows around us, we might discover 
the drowsy clover- leaves losing themselves in sleep, with folded palms 
and heads bowed down beneath the benediction of the dew. You may 
hear, perhaps, amid the silence, the plaintive wail of the whip-poor-will 



The na- 



THE TWILIGHT VOICE. 



ALONG THE ROAD. 



55 



far away, the evening carol of the vesper sparrow among the alders, or 
a slight rustling among the leaves o'erhead, but it is not the breeze 
that rustles. It is some soft-winged owl that has left his perch for 
his mission of dark deeds, or some night-flying moth, perhaps, seeking 
his mate anions^ the shadows. And how full of strangeness is this 
mysterious commotion, coming nearer and nearer to you in the dark- 
ness, how weird and inexplicable, until you hear the boyish whistle, the 
clatter of the loosened bars, and now the clear callina: voice rineing: in 
the still night air ! 

And hark ! how soon there comes an answering tinkle from the 
gloom. Now a harsh, grating note of the first katydid sounds high 
above in the maple -tree. Another and another seem waiting to take 
up the challenge, and the air soon vibrates with the never-ending dis- 
cord of their noisy multitudes. Moment by moment the roadside has 
wrapped itself in obscurity, and now there is nothing left but the black 
curtain of the night thrown over all. Nothing visible. Ah yes, the 
tiny lanterns of the sporting fire-flies that have come to seek us in the 
darkness — but we are afone. 




The Squirrel's Highway. 



T 



" Though absent long, 
These forms of beauty have not been to me 
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye ; 
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din 
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, 
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, 
And passing even into my purer mind 
With tranquil restoration. 

***** 

Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her : 'tis her privilege 
Through all the years of this our life to lead 
From joy to joy ; for she can so inform 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men. 
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith — that all wliich we behold 
Is full of blessings." 




tl^'-< 











" Little Prig !" canst tell me 
How to find the sweets like thee ? 




P'r/^f '^'■fftlVl: 



*" I ^HE venturous gossa- 

mer thrown floating on the 
breeze is not more precious to its 
parent spinner, nor is the pastoral 

brook dearer to its friend the kingfisher, than is the rural fence to our 
nimble rover the red squirrel. He is its constant companion, its chosen 
messenger, and is as much a part of its life history as are the twining 
vines and tendrils that cluster and sway about its mossy stones or timbers. 
He is the protege of the hollow rail, the welcome guest of many a 
chink and cranny among the tumbling walls. Well do the lichens and 



62 HJGI/IVAVS AND BYirAVS. 

mosses among those crevices know the soft caress of his palpitating fur ! 
and to those of us who have so often watched his agile 2.igzag course 
along the roadside, has it not sometimes seemed as if in his absence 
those old gray rails must miss the clinging patter of his feet? 

Not but that there are other frequent touches of companionship 
known to these gray timbers — the feathery contact of bluebird, or the 
fluttering tremor of the bobolink in his love rhapsody upon the jutting 
rail. There is the vibrant tap of woodpecker on the bar post, or the 
unwelcome grip of pigeon-hawk awaiting his prey upon this well-known 
thoroughfare. 

But these arc mostly chance loiterings and transitory episodes, and 
while such casual visitors know the fence chiefly as a passing resting- 
place, or coigne of vantage, the squirrel has learned it in its length and 
breadth. He has traversed its every nook and corner, and so surely as 
the chattering screech of the halcyon shall lead you on to the rarest of 
the brook's wild retreats, so truly will the beckonings of that frisking 
tail signal the way to their parallels amid the rural landscape. 

Where is the picturesque old manse, the ancient orchard, rumbling 
mill, or heron-haunted marsh that is not strung upon the line of some 
old rambling fence or wall ? Their net-work encloses the entire land- 
scape in its meshes like seams in the great coverlet of farms, woods, and 
meadows — a patchwork in which the criss-cross stitches of the zigzag 
rails do time-honored duty. 

I am told by foreign tourists that while many of our fences are 
reflected in those of other lands, the counterpart of the zigzag fence is 
to be seen in no other country. It is typical of Yankeeland. 

It is known as the snake or Virginia fence, and as the relic of a 
lavish era of unlimited forestry. History does not chronicle the name 
of its inventor, but I have long since learned to cherish a profound 
respect for the memory of this unknown individual. It is hard for me 
to imagine in the person of this primitive rail-splitter the picture of an 
untutored backwoodsman, and I never follow the course of one of these 
fences without feeling a certain consciousness that its original builder 
must have seen his work through eyes artistic as well as practical. 

The careless abandon of its lines — a repetition of form in which 
absolute repetition is continually defied by the capricious convolution of 
the woody grain, for there are no two rails made in the same mould — 
and their gray, satiny sheen, their weather-beaten stains of moss and 



THE SQUIRREL'S HIGHWAY. 



63 



lichen, and the ever- changing play of lights and shadows from their 
waving weeds and vines, make the old rail -fence truly an object of 
beauty in our landscape. Often have I lingered in its angles, and a 
hundred times have I thought of the host of pictures and reminiscences 
which might fill a book to the glory of a fence corner. 




IIALNT "I' THE HERON. 



Moreover, this peculiarity of conformation panders to a most worthy 
and blessed shiftlessness happily latent in the bones of almost every 
farmer; for while the ploughshare creeps close along the base of the old 
stone wall, and the direct course of most other fences offers a free 
gauge for the mowers scythe or the reaper's blade, the outward corners 
of the zigzag fence dodge beyond the reach of harm, and thus escape. 
How often, too, have these recesses served as convenient storage quarters 
for the stones and stubble of the field, and are thus safely barricaded 
against the inroads of the newly whetted scythe or cradle. 

Thus does the old rail -fence bedeck itself in an abandon of 
wreaths and garlands. For it would seem, in the old-time words of 
Spenser, that 

" No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, 
No arborett with painted blossoms drest, 
And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd 
To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd." 



The refuse stone piles clothe themselves in tangles of creeping dew- 
berry, cinque-foil, and ground-ivy ; and the round leaves of the creeping 



64 H IGHIVAYS AND BYWAYS. 

mallows conspire to hide their nakedness. Tall brambles rise and yield 
their snowy blossoms to the rifling bees, or later hang their purple fruit 
in tempting clusters to the troop of boys in their eager scramble among 
the rails. There are no black raspberries so large and luscious, no 
hazel-nuts so full and brown, and no filberts so tantalizing beneath their 
prickly pods, as those that grow up under the protection of the old rail 
fence. Here the rich green beds of sweet-fern give out their aromatic 
savor to the wise old simpler, the eager small boy, or even to the squir- 
rel in quest of the nutty kernels among its seed-bobs. The dull red 
blossoms of the glycine tell of sweet tubers beneath the ground, and the 
bright sunflowers of tall artichokes invite the old -time search among 
their roots. 

Here in these sheltered angles the eddying November winds hurl 
their flying leaves, and heap the glory of the autumn present upon the 
matted mould of many autumns past. Later, the whistling gales of 
winter whirl about its corners. Clouds of drifting snow bedim the ever- 
greens, and drive along the meadow, battling with the army of tall, gaunt 
mulleins and red-capped sumacs, and at last are whirled along these 
weather-beaten timbers, where fantastic peaked Alps arise, and overhang- 
ing glistening cliffs hem in the rambling rails in great blue-shadowed 
crescents, white and dazzling. 

Here, too, the icy air shall ring with the shouts of those same voices 
that are known so well to the rural fence through every month and 
season, and in every clime — those rollicking testimonies so quaintly 
pictured in that squirrel hunt of nearly three hundred years ago ; for 
squirrels were squirrels then as now, as " boyes" were always boys. In 
proof whereof I find among the pastoral poems of William Browne this 
graphic picture, presumably the closing scene of an old-time lively chase 
alona: the fence row : 



» 



" Then, as a nimble squirrel from the wood, 
Ranging the hedges for his filbert-food, 
Sits partly on a bough, his browne nuts cracking, 
And from the shell the sweete white kernell taking, 
Till (with their crookes and bags) a sort of boyes 
(To share w-ith him) come with so great a noyse, 
That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke, 
And for his life leape to a neighbour oake ; 
Thence to a beeche, thence to a row of ashes ; 
Whilst through the quagmires, and red water plashes, 



THE SQUIRRELS HIGH WAV. 65 

The boyes runne dabling through thicke and thin ; 
One tears his hose, another breakes his shin : 
This, torn and tatter'd, hath with much adoe 
Got by the briers ; and that hath lost his shoe : 
This drops his hand ; that headlong falls for haste ; 
Another cryes behinde for being last : 
With stickes and stones, and many a sounding halloo, 
The little foole with no small sport they follow ; 
Whilst he, from tree to tree, from spray to spray. 
Gets to the wood, and hides him in his dray." 

And now the white day echoes with the hilarity of those half-muffled 
voices from the depths of the white blockade, where, with " mittened 
hands and caps drawn low," the village truants undermine the glittering 
pile, within "a tunnel walled and overlaid with dazzling crystal." 

Near by we see the old farm coasting path upon the long knoll slope. 
Here is the jouncing " thank you, marm," built up above the wall with 
rails, and packed with snow. How, in those reckless days when hearts 
were light and life was new, we shot across this flashing crust, and like 
a glancing arrow flew in mid-air out above the wall ! I remember how 
the slender phantoms of the weeds trembled with fear, and shook the 
snow from their shoulders as we swept by. Then there was the startled 
hare that jumped from his hiding place and bounded away upon the 
white surface. I remember how he wrote his name in the snow at every 
jump, and I can plainly see that little nether tuft of snow that still 
clings to his fur as he hies aw^ay beneath the shelter of the drooping 
hemlocks, his winter rendezvous. 

When I look back and think of the numerous associations that 
cluster along the length of the pastoral fence, and realize what a part 
it has played in the life history of almost every country boy, I can but 
wonder that it has found so few to sing the praises of its memory. 

The volumes of our New England poets are singularly free from any 
such tribute. Allusions there are, of course, but even these are compara- 
tively few and brief. As a theme, however, it may be said that the New 
England fence yet awaits its poet and interpreter. Whittier, beloved of 
all New England's scattered fledglings, touches upon it occasionally: 

"You can see the gap in the old wall still." 

But here it is a gap which, as the context shows, serves only to let our 
poet through in passing on his foot-path. It is covered by a glance, and 



66 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

crossed in a single step. As such, as of a mere chance factor in the 
landscape, we occasionally encounter it, as in the "gray, lichen-covered 
stone wall "of Lowell, or that "winding wall of mossy stone, frost-flung 
and broken," which we find among the walks of Whittier. 

And there are other mentions scarcely less brief — mere touches, as 
of the singing bird flying across from field to field, and alighting on 
the casual fence, perhaps by accident or for one brief moment of rest. 
Rather could I have wished to discover among our lyric singers the 
counterpart of a more constant friend, the early bluebird of Lowell, 

" Shifting his light load of song 
From post to post along the cheerless fence." 

We have all heard the music of those 

" Pasture bars that clattered as they fell." 

But here again they lend their music, not because the old fence-post let 

them fall, but because they crossed the course of some farm lane or 

byway. 

I could have almost w'ished, too, that the voice of that old barn-yard 

gate, that 

"Creaked beneath the merry weight 

Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung. 

The welcome sound of supper-call to hear," 

had found its place rather in some song of the rural fence, even though 
it were missed from the serene picture of that charming twilight pastoral 
of Wachuset. 

Our New England prose, if my memory serves me, is equally deficient 
in appreciative allusion to these time-honored landmarks. They appear 
occasionally as barriers in an otherwise unbroken stroll or ramble, and 
apparently are made for no other purpose than to climb over or even to 
sit down upon. I can recall but one instance where the subject of our 
fences has been deemed a theme worthy of an essay. It was from the 
pen of one who has known from boyhood the mossy walls, the zigzag 
rails, and all their companion hosts of vegetation. He knows their 
hazels and their pokeweeds, their thistles, clematis, and woodbine, the 
white cymes of their elders, and even those " bulby stalks of golden- 
rods." He has lingered among those angles where " the pink spikes of 
the willow-herb overtop the upper rails, and the mass of the golden-rod's 




bloom lies like a drift of 
Sfold alonq; the eds:e of the 

O O O 



What a thorough Amer- 



rinsr has that 



drift of 
It is the symbol of 
the untold limitless wealth of 
the new continent. Its like 
is not seen anywhere else 
under the sun. How it 
bursts forth from the 
ground and pours out its 
riches — pale gold, yellow 
gold, and deep gold — a 
hundred per cent. 
dividend on every 
square foot, in al- 
loys of nearly forty dis- 
tinct species — I had al- 
most said specie ! How 
naturally, too, when we 
discover how often Nat- 
ure plants the mint so 
handy with its gold ! ^-^ 

Fancy what a proph- v^-S 
ecy our pioneer forefa- 





BRAMBLE CLUSTER. 



68 HIGH WA 1 '5 .-/ ND B \ ' // 'A YS. 

from this generous outburst of the sod ! Why might they not have seen 

in this 

Lavish wealth of Solidago, 

Visions of the Eldorado 

which has since become our heritage ? I wonder if those bulby stalks 
also gave their hint then as now? Whether they disclosed the secret 
of their being — of that little miner working in the dark, perhaps seeking 
for the very gold whose rich outcroppings roll out so royally above ? 

How many of us, too, have seen those " pink spikes of the willow- 
herb," also called fire-weed, either clustering along the fence or shedding 
their crimson glow upon the roadside ! But how few there are even of 
those who know the plant, and who, having watched its glistening seeds 
sailing in the winds, have sought to pick its slender capsule, and learn 
with breathless reverence the unfolding miracle of its hidden floss ! If 
perchance I shall reach my allotted " threescore and ten," I doubt if I 
shall ever have the heart to pass a copse of fire-weed without lingering 
to pick one of these fascinating seed pods, and, clasping its stem in one 
hand and gently pressing its tip with the fingers of the other, behold 
this magical unfolding. Not more wondrous is the ashy phoenix of the 
dandelion than is this exquisite and amazing creation, with its four tiny 
looms that weave in a second of time an evanescent spirit fabric, whose 
contrast pales the efforts of a human lifetime into insignificance — a 
warp of woven sunshine with a woof of ether — a marvellous, subtle sheen 
that flashes in the sun but an instant and is gone. It is always awe- 
inspiring and wonderful to me ; it is beautiful beyond description ; and 
when I see those snowy spirit forms take wing and fly heavenward, it is 
more than beautiful — it is divine. 

And yet it would seem that there are those among her students who 
are above the influence of such a revelation as this in Nature. Disciples 
of a rampant, superficial school of art who, in seeking to portray Nature 
"in her breadth," would feel that they can put the straight-jacket upon 
her, and readily ignore so small and trivial a thing as this. The land- 
scape, to their half-blind and unsympathetic eyes, resolves itself into a 
map, a relative opposition of so many "masses" and "values" of form 
and color. In the mastery of these lies their end and aim, while Nature 
in her " detail " is worthy only of the scientist and " has no place in art." 

The thought of these misguided beings minds me of those victorious 
words of him who scorned to drag his heart in bondage, who found in 



THE SQUIRREL'S HIGH WAY. 69 

Nature the mother of his art, and who embahned the memory of a dis- 
affected school in that memorable burst of satire — a retributive sonnet 
which time has proved a fitting requiem : 

"^ Poet! — He hath put his heart to school, 
^for dares to move unpropped upon the staff. 
Which art hath lodged within his hand ; must laugh 
By precept only, and shed tears by rule ! 
Thy art be nature ! the live current quaff, 
And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool 
In fear that else, when critics grave and cool 
Have killed him, scorn should write his epitaph. 
How does the meadow flower its bloom unfold ! 
Because the lovely little flower is free 
Down to its root, and in that freedom bold ; 
And so the grandeur of the forest-tree 
Comes not by casting in a formal mould, 
But from its own divine vitality !" — Wordsworth. 

Humility is the only attitude that wins the heart of Nature. It yields 
the glow that lights the vision of the " inward eye," than which all other 
eyes are blind. Audacity and impressionism have their importance and 
their place in art, but they are not its pinnacle — the one yields helpful 
courage for the encounter, and the other is the useful short-hand system 
which often comes to the artist's rescue, and without whose aid many 
of Nature's most rare and subtle expressions would elude him and be 
lost. But its function is realized in the sketch or motive, which is rarely 
a picture, more often but a rough draft, a hieroglyph, a stenographic 
note, which, like others of its class, is fully intelligible alone to its au- 
thor, and whose only rational excuse for being is in its latent possibili- 
ties of ultimate translation and perfection. 

That Nature's landscape does, to those who seek therefor, resolve 
itself into so-called masses and values, is an important triitli ; but equally 
and more deeply true are the infinity and spirit of her breadth. 

The "value" of the broad gray mass of yonder sloping meadow will 
find its truest interpreter (assuming an equality of technical skill) in 
him who knows by heart its elements of life and color, who has seen 
its " violet by a mossy stone," who has plucked its grasses from their 
purple maze, and knows the secret of those endless subtle variations of 
tender russets, grays, and greens, and cloudy films of smoky color that 
scread among its herbage. 




\ ^^w'^"*4£"' T\\Q true significance and "value" 

■ St 1 ^^ ■'^^^''"^^^ of that massive bank of oaks will be 
"T- «^ ^ - most deeply felt and understood, and 

therefore most truly rendered, by him who has learned the beauty of its 
vernal buds of scarlet velvet, its swinging catkins, and the contour of 



THE SQUIRREL'S HIG HWAY. 71 

its perfect leaf; who has stood beside its boughs, and seen the blue ot 
sky and gray of passing cloud in turn reflected from the polished foliage. 

The impress of that knowledge, and the sympathy and companion- 
ship it implies, will send its impulse quivering to his brush tip in a 
spontaneous enthusiasm that shall subdue the pigment to a medium for 
thought, and shall hold it in its place as the means rather than the end. 
And while the misguided apostle of the new school, who would show us 
" Nature in her breadth," shall revel in his values of turpentine and paint 
and brush marks, the transctipt of his more humble brother -worker, 
while not less broad, shall palpitate with life and feeling, and through 
some secret, intangible testimony of its own shall conjure up in the 
beholder the heart-memories of Nature, and shall breathe her spirit from 
the canvas. 

What is the aspen without its fluttering leaf ? What is the morning 
meadow without its beads of dew .'' Only a few weeks since I met a 
worthy gentleman who had " studied nature " twenty years, and who had 
never seen a dew-spangled gossamer in the grass. " Well, yes," he would 
say, " I suppose I must have seen them, but I don't remember exactly." 
There are many who go to nature in the same spirit, who look without 
seeing, and perchance if they do see, see without a conscious retina. 

Not that I would have every picture a foreground detailed to the 
distance, nor every eye a microscope. Neither, in the language of Rus- 
kin, would I desire mere "finishing for the sake of finish" all over the 
canvas. " The ground is not to be all over daisies, nor is every daisy 
to have 'its star -shaped shadow'" — painted so exquisitely in those 
feeling lines of Wordsworth : 

" So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive : — 
Would that the little flowers were born to live 
Conscious of half the pleasure which they give ; 
That to this mountain-daisy's self were known 
The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown 
On the smooth surface of this naked stone." 

Apropos, again among the pages of "Modern Painters" we find 
this rare token of a "cultivated and observant eye" and of a devout 
heart : 

"The grass-blades of a meadow a mile off are so far discernible that there will be 
a marked difference between its appearance and that of a piece of wood painted green. 
And thus Nature is never distinct and never vacant. She is alwavs mysterious, but 



72 H 1 G HU'AYS AND BYWAYS. 

always abundant ; you always see something, but you never see all. And thus arise that 
exquisite finish and fulness which God has appointed to be the perpetual source of fresh 
pleasure to the cultivated and observant eye — a finish which no distance can render 
invisible and no nearness comprehensible : which in every stone, every bough, every 
cloud, and every wave is multiplied around us, forever presented and forever exhaustless. 
And hence in art every space or touch in which we can see everything, or in which we 
can see nothing, is false. Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant : every 
touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false 
which represents nothing." 

"There is as much finish in the right concealment of things as in the right exhi- 
bition of them." 

Here is a key to the ver)- heart of nature, if one will only use it. 
And I would but add my faint echo in an entreaty for a deeper sense 
of the infinity of nature's living tone and palpitating color — a plea for 
the more intelligent recognition of the elements that yield the tint 
which we vainly strive to imitate upon the canvas. Such knowledge will 
give a voice to every pigment on the palette, and to the brush an an- 
swering consciousness ; for, whether disciple of a school or not, whether 
artist, poet, or layman, who can deny that such an attitude toward 
nature shall yield a harvest of deeper knowledge and increased delight, 
not merely in the contemplation of the footprint, but even as truly in 
the study of the limitless panorama ? 

Is there not to me an added charm in the pink flush that mantles 
the side ot yonder mountain-spur when I know so well that it is shed 
by the myriads of blossoms in an acre of glowing fire-weed.'' And as 
my eye follows the cool cloud-shadow as it glides down upon the moun- 
tain-slope, among the varied patchwork of its fields and farms, is there 
not a deepened significance imparted to every separate tint that tells 
me something of its being .'' 

If in the faint yellow checkered forms I see fields of billowing wheat 
and barley, and recall a hundred of their associations, or if from that 
quaintly-dotted patch there comes a whiff from a sweet-scented field, 
with its cocks of new-mown hay, its skimming swallows and ringing 
scythes, with here a luminous gray of sandy meadow fresh from the 
plough or harrow, and there a weed-grown copse lit up with golden-rod ; 
if that kaleidoscopic medley of grays and olives and browns tells me of 
its pastures, with their tinkling bells, of its fragrant beds of everlasting, 
ferns, and hardback, its trailing junipers and its moss-flecked bowlders, 
and each of these in turn draws me still closer, and whispers something 



TH E S Q UIR REVS HIGH IV A V. 



73 



of itself — the everlasting with its pendent jewel, the orchis with its little 
confidant and nursling, the gentian with its close -kept secret and its 
never-opened eye ; if yonder bluish bloom means a field of blueberries 
to me, and that snowy sweep brings visions of the blossoming buck- 
wheat field, with its symphony of humming bees — tell me, have I not 
only seen the mountain-slope, but have I not also heard its voice ? 




bllll.-lllLL I'A.^lLUt. 



If there is any one of our fences which more than another seems 
a part of Nature herself, it is the picturesque old stone wall. It is of 
all our fences the most primitive in construction and the least con- 
taminated by art. 

Built of Nature's unwrought materials, she has set her seal upon it 
and marked it for her own. Where the artificial edges of the blast or 
hammer show themselves, how quickly are the angles subdued, how 
surely are they hidden beneath the covering moss and lichens ! Should 
the prim contour offend the sense of Nature's harmony, the frost king 
proves her potent ally, and soon does his work of subjugation, until at 
length the wall appears as much a product of the earth itself as do the 
bushes and the brambles, the burdocks, thistles, and milk-weeds that 
grow beside it, and the clambering vines that cling about it. 

I know a ruined wall H'hose history dates back well-nigh a century, 
now a scattered, rambling pile of weather-beaten, nature-saturated bowl- 
ders. Half hidden beneath its covering leaves and creeping plants, it 
seems almost like a grave, and in many places it is lost beneath a cov- 



74 



H JG HIVAYS AND BYWAYS. 



ercd mound, where Nature has at last entirely reclaimed it and wrapped 
it in her bosom. 

This ancient landmark follows the border of a lane of equal antiq- 
uity, formerly the primitive forest path of the ])ioneer who redeemed its 
neighboring sunny meadows from the wilderness, and whose hands laid 
the wall that, like himself, has now returned to earth. 

The remnants of his old log hut, it is said, are even now to be traced 
among the new-grown timber on the mountain-side, surrounded by the 
crumbled pile of the massive log fence built about his primitive habita- 
tion as a barricade of defence against prowling wolves and bears — and 
even Indians too, if the record of the sod is to be believed ; for many 
arc the tomahawks and flint arrow-heads that have been turned up by 
the plough among these meadows. 

This wall has long since gone out of service, but its innumerable 
foster-children have risen up to do duty in its stead; for here are almost 
impassable thickets of hazel bushes, dwarf cherry and filbert jungles, 
with here and there at near intervals majestic shagbark hickories spring- 
ing up directly from its heart of stone. The sloping roots have raised 
and rolled away the bowlders on every side. There are occasional 
colonies of pig-nut trees, and now and then a huge spreading butter- 
nut, and the finest specimens of wild cherry to be found for miles 
around — all scattered along the length of this ancient wall in an exqui- 
site abandon. 

The sharp whistle of the chipmunk greets you here at almost every 
step, and in such a spot there is more than ordinary significance in that 
shrill voice. It is a voice from the heart of the wall, for the chipmunk 
is its companion and its historian. I am aware that Nature has given 
this little fellow several black marks. He is doubtless a little thief, 
often making havoc among the farmer's stores, and taking his regular 
three meals a day from the granary. As a type of greed his name is 
almost proverbial. His vast subterranean storehouses bear witness to 
his acquisitive and miserly proclivities, often in a single season being 
packed with provender representing ten times his actual need. 

How often have I seen this little fellow on the homeward jump, his 
head puffed out with a pignut in each cheek and a third between his 
teeth ! But the inference thus conveyed is as undeserving as the black 
marks which he carries. If his gluttony is proverbial, it is equally prov- 
idential. He is by no means a gourmand by profession, for his true 



THE SQUJRKEL-S HIGHWAY. 75 

vocation — the one with which he is accredited in the book of Nature — 
is that of a most skilful planter and landscape gardener. We have him 
to thank for many of our most highly prized specimens of standard 
trees. It is from the providential plethora of his subterranean treasure- 
houses that have sprung these noble oaks and hickories, these massive 
chestnuts, and this outburst of hazel and wild cherry among this bed 

of stone. 

There are other tenants that people its crevices. The lithe weasel 
has his beaten tracks among them, where he threads his way in search 
of hidino- field-mice that make their nests beneath the stones. The 
chipmunk sometimes encounters him in the hall -way of his burrow, 
where this dreaded enemy has lain in wait for him, and the partridge 
is surprised by that same stealthy approach while browsing on the buds 
among the hazels. 

There is hardly a square foot in this old barricade that I have not 
learned by heart, from its beginning at the old balanced gate, with its 
long jutting beam and stone, that makes its creaking sweep out above 
the barn-yard, to its other terminus at the end of the lane half a mile 
away, where the scattered stones thin out upon a broad bare rock some 
hundred feet in width. This particular rock is known the country 
round as " Lawsuit Rock," and thereby hangs a tale. We have heard 
of a certain rock in the bed of Concord River on which four townships 
bound, and I have a faint recollection of a veteran oak in New England 
which drops its acorns in three different States, whose boundaries meet 
at the centre of its trunk. But not in the history of these more im- 
portant and historical landmarks is there to be found such a record of 
feud and strife as that which had its scene of action on this old flat 
rock, and that, too, simply because it had the misfortune to figure in a 
deed of property as " y^ gray rock near y«^ boundary yi'Wf^ of Ziby Free- 
man, his pitch." 

But Ziby Freeman is long since in his grave. His hands were not 
mi.xed up in this early strife, but tradition says he looked on in safety 
from his neutral ground and enjoyed the fun between the two lively 
factions whose possessions bordered his own, and were nominally sep- 
arated by this now ruined wall, which was supposed to extend from this 
"gray rock" — ay, there's the rub — "due east in a straight line to y^ 
mile-stone on y"^ Trumbull turnpike." 

But Caleb Prindle, a contemporaneous townsman, and chief fence- 



76 JUG H WAYS AND in' IV A VS. 

viewer of the town through many years, happily still lives, and, though 
past his eightieth birthday, bids fair, with the promise of his erect figure 
and ruddy bloom of countenance, to become a centenarian. He is a 
materialized sunbeam, and so warm is his genial heart that it seems to 
have thawed every vestige of the winter of his life, excepting perhaps 
the snow of his soft white hair, which falls in a silken avalanche upon 
his shoulders. There are two smaller tufts of snow thatching his brows, 
but Uncle Caleb heeds them not, and he looks out brightly and happily 
through their foreshadowing. His mind is like a crystal, and even his 
boyhood does not as yet seem so far away to him but that he can 
recount its occurrences with a minuteness of incident often convulsing 
to himself as well as uproariously contagious to his ever-ready hearers. 




A LLKARlMi. 



It is a treat indeed to interview old Uncle Caleb, and draw him out 
on the reminiscences of this fiat rock. It is like a long chapter in some 
Colonial novel — with a large preponderance of comedy, it is true, but 
not a little of the deep pathos of genuine romance — to hear him tell 
of the tribulations and the complications of which this old rock was the 
innocent cause. 

" Ye see it cum abaout in this way," he usually begins, as he throws 
his head to one side, and enforces his remarks by beating time with 
his outstretched finger — " ye see it all cum by thet ar feller a-puttin' 
in thet old gray rock into the deed so car'less like, 'n' makin' so much 
a p'int on't. Naow, old Roderick Emmons alluz sed ez haow the deed 
wa'n't wuth the paper it wuz wrii on, cuz they wa'n't a ' foresaid,' 
ner a fus' part, er a secon' part, 'n' sech, into it from the beginnin' 
teu the end on't. But I'll tell ye haow it wuz. Ye see, in t/iciii times 
thet ar rock yender wa'n't no bigger'n a bar'l head — thet is, wut you 
cud see on't — 'n' it wa'n't no grct nuther, only jest stuck aout the 
graound a lettle, kinder flat 'n' low daown like, ye know. But ye see" 



THE SQUIRREL'S HIGHWAY. 'JJ 

— here the face lights up, the eyes begin to twinkle, and the wrinkled 
lips must needs be wiped with the red bandanna handkerchief ere he 
takes up the thread — " ye see, when thet ar feller on the up side — thet 
wuz Acel Benson (he wuz the gret-gran'ther of Elijy Benson, daown the 
road a spell ; ye kin see his haouse thar threu the trees daown in the 
holler) — but ye see, w'en he cum to plough up thar on his side — they 
wa'n't no fence thar then — he kep' a-runnin' agraoun' on this pesky 
stun bottom, 'n' w'en he cum to clear up the gravel a piece, he see haow 
the old ' bar'l hed ' wuz consid'able of a spreader all araoun'. Now, w'en 
he cum to look on't a minnit, 'n' kinder cogitatin' like, it somehow cum 
into his hed, ye know, ez haow the hull on't was a 'gray rock.' 'N' he 
jest went straight to hum, 'n' took a car'ful readin' o' the deed — kinder 
sorter prarjle like, ye know." 

Would that the reader might catch the accompanying glimpse of 
simulated piety with which Uncle Caleb here favors us, and that final 
smile ere he resumes ! 

" Naow, he wuz consid'able I'arned, 'n' wuz a gret meetin' man, 'n' 
he wuz a consid'able bizniss man teu — b'leeved in keepin' clus to the 
letter on't. So he wa'n't long in decidin', / kin tell ye, 'n' he wuz aout 
thar agin with his team in jest abaout a shake uv a lamb's tail. 'N' he 
went to work 'n' scooped aout the turf abaout seventy-five feet along 
Ziby Freeman's fence until he struck the edge o' the rock, 'n' then 
wut did the feller do but put up his stake thar, 'n' run his fence line 
' due east to the turnpike,' jest ezac'ly ez wuz called fer in the writin' 
o' the deed." 

Uncle Caleb's narrative is always broken here, and it does one good 
to see his keen enjoyment as he rubs his knees and, with head thrown 
back, gives vent to his loud " Haw ! haw ! haw ! Wut times them fellers 
hed ! I never see sech goin's on." 

" Naow wait a minnit," he expostulated, eagerly, as I was about to 
ask a question ; " jes lemme go on tell I git through. Ye see, thet tuk 
in consid'able of a piece o' graoun', 'n' he hed the law onto his side teu. 
Then, I tell ye, cum the fun. Old Acel, ye know, he gut fired with a 
sorter high 'n' holy zeal, 'n' wuz 'tarnal anxyis all on a sudden to git 
up thet ar line fence, 'n' they wuz a sight o' small stun araoun' thar 
a-waitin'. So he went aout, 'n' gut all his nabers to come araoun' 'n' 
gin 'im a lift, 'n' he hed a reg'lar fence bee. Lor' !" ejaculated he, under 
his breath, shaking the while from top to toe with suppressed laughter. 



78 IIIGHWA YS A N D n Y W A VS. 

"they didn't know wut he wiiz up to, yc know. They ua'n't a-thinkin' 
so much of stun walls abaout thct time ez they wuz abaout thet ar 
gingerbread 'n' jiie \\ cider 'n' sech a-cummin'; but, I tell ye, they kep' 
at it clus until the old wall, sech ez it wuz, wuz built whar Acel said." 

At this point of his story we always know just what to expect. The 
ruddy color has gradually stolen to Uncle Caleb's ears, and now his 
bald head shows its glow. His eyes have become nervous and restless 
in their added twinkle beneath their shaggy brows. And now he begins 
to shake all over; every laughing wrinkle in his old face is brought 
into play ; his tongue rolls between his wrinkled lips ; and the old red 
handkerchief must soon come into requisition in mopping the tears that 
trickle down among the furrows of his checks, as he tells in broken 
sentences of "the fun them fellers hed," and " haow them stun did fly." 

" Ye see, this other feller — thet is, the feller on the daown side, Giles 
Farchild, ye know — he lived consid'able of a piece off on the 'pike 
yender, 'n' putty soon he gut wind on't, 'n' he gut lookin' et the deed 
teu, 'n' nateral enuff his readin' on't wuz kinder dijfcrent from AccTs 
readin . So he thort ez haow it wuz abaout time to clear up his Ian' a 
leetle, ye know, 'n' git rid o' them stun. Then, I tell ye, come the fun. 
I don't b'lieve they ever wuz a wall ez hed sech a lively time in buildin' 
ez this un. Fi'tin' ! — Leuther ! I never heerd on sech fl'tin'. Lor'! 
haow the hull lot on 'em did turn aout ! It looked et one time mighty 
like ez if the hull taown wuz takin' a han', 'n' Giles Farchild with his 
folks, 'n' Acel Benson with his'n, one a-heavin' on the stun, 'n' t'other 
a-rippin' of 'em up, 'n' shyin' 'em araoun' like all possessed. I never see 
sech goin's on. Leuther! how them stun did fly! Haw! haw! haw! 
I tell ye, in its time, thet old wall thar hcz travelled pooty much all over 
the meddy, 'n' they's no tellin' but wut them ar stun might 'a been 
a-shyin' naow, ef it wa'n't for Jotham Nichols a-steppin' up 'n' buyin' on 
'em aout, 'n' j'inin' on 'em. But, Leuther/ haow them stun did fiy !" 

Then followed another long, convulsive scene of merriment, which 
gradually seemed to shake out all the laugh that was left in our story- 
teller for the time being. When he had finally subsided he leaned back 
in his chair, while an expression of grim consciousness seemed to steal 
across his countenance, as he resumed, in an absent-minded strain : 

" But old Acel's dead 'n' gone teu his final reck'nin', 'n' I dessay like 
'nuff he'll stand ez good a show thar ez a good many on us ez is 
kinder injyin' on his worldly capers." 



THE SQUIRREL'S HIGHWAY. 



79 




" Is it true, Uncle 
Caleb," I inquired, hur- 
riedly, lest a penitential 
mood should settle down 
upon him — "is it true 
that Acel had a touch 
of insanity ?" 

" Wa'al, I dunno — I dunno," 
replied he, brightening up. " They 

is folks wat sez he wuz kinder crazy on the subjic — kinder graspin' 'n' 
averishis like, ye know; but I dunno. They ain't no use talkin", he wuz 
drefifle sot — drejfle sot — 'n" he wuz ez odd ez Dick's hat-band ; but I 
ain't so sartin about the crazy. I'm cal'latin' they wa'n't much of the 






HAUNTED HOISE. 



8o HI G H \VA YS A ND B Y WA YS. 

crazy. Lor' bless ye, no," he finally expostulated, as his memory re- 
freshed him, " not a bit on't — they wa'n'l an insane bone in liis body, any 
more'n they is in his dreffle likely offspring daown the road yender. 
He's old Acel right over agin — gut the same machinery into 'im — 
smarter'n chain lightnin', 'n' ekully law-abidin' 'n' speritooal — gret 
meetin' man." 

The story of Uncle Caleb did not stop here, however; indeed, we 
had yet heard but its beginning, for there were long years of bitterness 
that followed from this scene of early strife, enmities, and estrangements 
that were handed down from father to son, and to children's children. 
The tattered pages of the old town records still bear silent witness to 
many of his recollections, and show how potent were the influences of 
this early feud in the administration of titles, legacies, and even large 
inheritances. 

There were episodes, also, which; from the deep tremor of Uncle 
Caleb's voice, showed too plainly how close they had come to the heart 
of our aged story-teller himself, for there was no lack of the tender 
pathos of the old, old story. There were long estrangements and heart- 
aches, and even the legendary lore of witchcraft and mysterious tragedy 
had found their place in his romantic narrative ere he finished. There 
were strange traditions of a frightened face wrought upon a window- 
pane ; and so long as that church-yard acre lasts I shall hear the story 
of that sweet Evangeline, seen for the last time, lost in a twilight 
reverie, upon a lonely grave. 

One relic of these Colonial days still exists — it lies close by upon 
our squirrel's highway, and this nimble climber knows it well. It is the 
old deserted house of Acel Benson — a moss-grown ruin, full of weird 
tradition. For is it not known many miles around as the " house with 
a haunted well .?" Have I not heard over and over again of that mys- 
terious light that flickers and dances above the well-curb .'' — how, in the 
dead of night, 

" A pale blue riame sends out its flashes 
Through creviced roof and shattered sashes?" 

— how it plays and prances about that old house like a witching sprite 
vainly searching with its lantern for a clew that was never found, now 
emerging above the chimney-top, now hovering along the weed-grown 
eaves, where the startled bats come out and swoop about its halo, and 



THE SQUIRREL'S HIGHWAY. 8 1 

at last how it flits across the tangled yard, hovers a moment above the 
well, and disappears ? 

There are those among the aged towns-people who yet tell of old- 
time midnight vigils at the Benson fence — watching for the first glim- 
mer of that lambent flame above the well-curb — and more than one 
white-haired matron I could mention to whom this playful will-o'-the- 
wisp is but a ghostly visitor from the other world. 

Old Aunt Huldy, with half-frightened look and bated breath, which 
only half-concealed the tremulous, broken voice, was prone to tell of the 
" terrible secret of the old Benson well," and of the unpardoned soul 
that was doomed to " hant the arth till the Angil Gabriel should blow 
his horn." 

What is the secret of that overwhelming depression that weighs 
upon one's being when in the presence of an old deserted house ? It 
overpowers you. You may strive to laugh it down, but the echo of that 
laugh is a weird reproof and mockery ; you may strive to reason it away, 
but it is not obedient to the intellect; it is not the slave of reason. Ye 
who were wont to laugh at the credulous fancy of the village crone, 
come with me to that old house in the shadows of the twilisfht, and 
see how quickly are the smiles of ridicule dispelled. 

I sought this ruin upon an autumn evening; I picked my way 
through its wilderness of weeds, following the path of some prowling 
tenant that had worn a beaten track to door and cellar way. I saw 
the yawning roof; I saw the yellow leaves of twenty years that had 
been whisked in at the gaping sashes, and had been whirled by the 
blustering wind into great piles in the damp corners. I looked out 
upon the high-grown weeds and mildewed lilacs that swayed against the 
window-sills. The drop of the squirrel's nut rattled on the rafters over- 
head, and every sheltered corner was festooned with heavy cobwebs 
laden with the dust of generations. I saw the chimney-place, the old 
brick oven with its empty void, and in the fireplace below an ashy 
ember of an old back-log lying upon the hearth that once was radiant 
in its glow. Here were worn hollows in the floor that seemed to speak 
— imprints of the old arm-chair that told whole volumes of past cosy 
comfort at this fireside ; here a nick in the plastered wall, and a clouded 
spot above, which, with the testimony of the dents in the floor beneath, 
told plainly of the evening pipe and the figure in the tilted chair. There 
was a cupboard door with its worn spot about the knob ; here a rusty 

6 



82 



in Gil WAYS AND RVWAYS. 



nail with the shadow of its hane^ 
ing coat still plainly visible 
upon the wall — a hundred 
things, and each seemed trying 
to tell its story in some mys- 
terious language of its own. -^ 

I sought out the 
nooks and cupboards, 











PEEPS BETWEEN THE RAILS. 



^jJ^^^\L-M'Si^'''^^^$>^l* ^"fl I remember at length finding myself 

■' -f^J^^'' -Wl*^ ;^?~^-^V lost in a deep day-dream merely at the 

- ^f^''4 y'%^,.KA'''^^" \ sight of a mildewed fragment which I 

''^ "^^^ i,A^t^>/feifA.t\ had kicked up on the crumbling boards. 

5s^> -^v ^i^^ '^3fV"\ It was nothinsf but a musty bit of leather 

5 _^ rp^ ^ — nothing but a little baby shoe turned 

up from a pile of rubbish on the closet floor. 

How eloquent that oppressive, suggestive stillness — a sombre silence 

which yet seemed weighted with latent tidings — finding my ear ever on 



THE SQUIRREL'S HIGHWAY. 83 

the alert for some half-expected whisper from every gloomy corner, and 
riveting my restless eyes as though seeking for an answering look from 
every dark recess! Why do you peer so slowly and cautiously into the 
shadows of the dark closet? Why do you so often turn and glance 
behind as you pass among these gloomy passages ? What is it that 
you seek ? And, as you reach the top of those tottering stairs, why that 
quick and sweeping glance ? why that shudder but half concealed ? Yes, 
it is damp. The air is heavy with the emanations of mould and rotting 
timbers. But it is not the chill that brings the shudder; it is not the 
dampness. The soggy floors break and crumble beneath your feet, and 
you draw your wraps close about you as you pick your way through the 
dank and musty halls, so clammy cold. The doors have fallen from 
their hinges, and lie in shapeless heaps among the rotten timbers of the 
floor. The toppling rafters and sagging beams are tumbling from their 
moorings, and are damp with slim}' mildew, and peopled with destroying 
worms. Snails and lizards are crushed beneath your footsteps, and as 
you hurry toward the door the coils of a skulking snake disappear 
before you among the dark holes at your feet. You are weighed down 
with a sense of the loneliness and desolation of this old house. But 
there is a still deeper impress. As you stand and look back upon its 
sightless hollow eyes and crumbling frame, there is something besides 
the sighing of its pines, something in its uncanny silence, something in 
its clammy breath, which speaks, and it says — how unrelenting came the 
voice ! — 

" I am dead. My life has flown, and I am returning to the mould 
that gave me being. Time was when these timbers glowed with ruddy 
warmth, and thrilled with throbbing pulses of the living, when these 
silent halls echoed with the ring of joyous voices, and these sightless 
windows were merry with laughing eyes that looked out from the life 
within. But how have these things left me ! Behold in me a moulder- 
ing thing ! Naught knows me now but the fungus and the gnawing 
worm ; the serpent and the prowling vermin of the night traverse my 
bones. Whither my life has flown, I know not ; whither its destiny, I 
know not. How thus do I behold my counterpart in thee ! Comrade, 
I would greet thee, for art thou not my brother t That which thou 
dost seem is but a shape like me, thyself only its brief tenant, and soon 
shall cast it of¥, and leave it even as I am left." 

The fence no longer serves as the squirrel's highway to this old 



84 HJG II IV A YS AND BY JI'A i 'S . 

liaunt. The mossy boards and pickets have long since lent their essence 
to nourish the growth of weeds that now obscure them. The squirrel 
of Colonial days knew them well, but the nimble rover of to-day must 
needs reach his old rookery by a branch highway from tree to tree, from 
which he finds his path to the mossy shingles. Presently he appears at 
the little curved window in the gable, crouches a moment, and launches 
himself through the air, landing with clinging feet upon the hickory 
bough that sways beneath him as he bounds along. At the trunk he 
pauses, rummages beneath a shag of bark, and in a moment more we 
hear his snicker, and the loud scraping of his teeth upon the hard 
white nutshell. 

The shell-bark hickory is the squirrel's favorite storehouse. A quick 
stroke of axe or sledge on one of these trunks will often dislodge num- 
bers of nuts which have been packed away and wedged beneatli the 
loose shags of bark by these provident little fellows. I remember a 
pocketful of nuts thus gathered from a single tree in a midwinter ramble 
in the snow-crust; and I remember, too, the scolding protest from the 
interior, and the two black eyes at the knot-hole. 

But the scraping sound has ceased, the empty nut has rattled among 
the branches, the squirrel has left his perch, and now we see him tacking 
back and forth upon the fence with flying colors. Here he makes a 
sudden halt, followed by a crouch and spring to the branch of the low- 
hanging apple-tree. This old crag has learned to know his grip, and 
gets its daily shake of companionship. The apples of autumn tumble 
about him as he speeds along, and in spring he makes a whirling tumult 
amone the bees, leavina: a mimic snow-fall in the shower of blossoms in 
his track as he leaps up on the corn-crib eaves and pries and scolds 
about that protecting piece of tin upon its roof. 

How well he knows every inch upon his path ! Here he makes a 
long clean jump across the middle of a certain rail, knowing well of that 
hornets' nest beneath — a nest of paper, by-the-way, made, perhaps, from 
the gray fibres of the very rail on which it hangs — a parcel, the nature 
of whose contents he knows full well. 

Now he takes a circuit on a lower timber, for no cause save perhaps 
the memory of some sly slip-noose which came so near being his doom 
in its artful poise above the rail. Here he lingers with a wistful look 
at the empty robin's nest between the cross-beams, and there are^^visions 
of bright blue eggs — a golden quaff from rare blue cups. The stuffy 



THE SQUIRREVS HIGHWAY. 85 

little wren in her post-hole citadel hears the vibrant murmur of his 
approach along the boards, and plants herself at the opening of her bur- 
row, where she sputters and scolds with great ado. 

Here, too, is the woodpecker s den in the dead tree close by, to which 
our red rover paid a well-remembered visit ; but, contrary to his calcula- 
tions, madam was at home, and met him at the door, and planted a 
rebuke between his eyes that quite dispelled his appetite for the time 
being. He will never work that mine again. See how the mere thought 
of that pickaxe reception speeds him on as he skips along and clears the 
bar-posts at a jump ! 

But while this little athlete is at home on almost every fence, and 
trains a special gait for each, there are some of them that have no 
attractions for him. Such, for example, is the sawyer's fence. I do not 
remember ever having seen a squirrel on one of these fences. They 
cannot offer him the continuity of track as in other fences, and as a foot- 
path the sawyer's fence practically comes to an end at every step. The 
progress of a squirrel on one of these fences would indeed be an amusing 
spectacle, for his course could be little else than a series of bounds from 
the summits of the oblique slanting rails. If I were a squirrel I think 
I should give a wide berth to the sawyer's fence, and I incline to the 
same lack of enthusiasm concerning it, even though I am not a squirrel, 
as who would not that has traversed its length around a ten-acre lot in 
the vain hope of some assailable point of thoroughfare 1 

The sawyer's fence is the most exasperating member of the whole 
fence tribe, leading you on and on in a most persuasive sort of way, 
baffling you at every attempt to make the breach, entangling your legs 
and clutching your garments in a manner most insinuating and humili- 
ating; and as you beat a retreat, to calm yourself and re-adjust matters 
a little, it stands there in defiance, to " rail" at you, as it were, and plainly 
seems to say, " Well, what are you going to do about it .''" There is a 
secret spirit of antagonism in the sawyer's fence which, in its moments 
of rampage, is past all subjugation. It is a most absolute annihilator 
of true dignity. 

If this fence has a motto, it would seem that it should sound some- 
thing like this, " Arripio 1" and why not also, "Arripitor! Arripientur !" 
It would at least appear to live up faithfully to some such legend, 
whether considered in its literal or acoustic sense, as any one can testify 
who has made its intimate acquaintance. 



86 



HIGH iV AYS AND BYWAYS. 



Trust not the sawyer's fence. Better by far a circuit of the meadow 
with the peace of unknown achievement than victory in such grim 
disguise. 

But this eccentric champion is not without its good points. How 
hath it occasionally redeemed itself in ministering to the exigencies of 
life! In the rescue of that guileless youth, for instance, who returning 
home after dark one summer evening, fresh from a forbidden swim with 
the village boys, and who, in tripping innocently through the kitchen. 




i.iioKiNi; ri'-HiLi.. 



was suddenly accosted by his mother, who would know, forsooth, " how 
that shirt came to be wrong side out." And he, being a mindful lad, 
and taking in the situation at a glance, replied, " Well, ain't that funny ! 
Why, mother, I must 'a done that gettin' through the sawyer's fence up 
on the hill near grandpa's. I thort I felt sumthin' give;" and the fond 
mother folded him in her arms, and said he was a dutiful son, and that 
she never again would wrong him by unkind suspicion. 

It is this same innocent who knows so well that spreading canopy 



THE SQi'IRJiEL'S HIG HWAY. 87 

of wild grape above the old stone wall, with its cosy retreat beneath, and 
the suCToestive watermelon rinds that strew the orround. 

It is his clear voice we hear in the evening dusk calling in pasture 
lot and lane. His is the pail that clinks along the road where dusty 
brambles droop and wait for him. His laugh has rung out high and 
merrily in concord with that creaking gate, and often have we heard 
his shout echoing among the din of barking dogs and clamor of the 
mob about its captive prisoner in the wall. 

He has set sly snares in many a woody copse, and he knows the 
esfSfs of starlinar, oriole, and thrush. The brook-side knows him, and the 
golden willow twigs yield bird-like music at his lips. He has seen the 
owl's nest in the hollow tree, the musk-rat's hut among the bogs, and 
the flashes from the gravelly river-bed to him are tell-tale gleams of 
silvery dace, of minnow, or of painted bream. He knows the speckled 
beauties too, but, alas ! he knows them only on another's string. He 
has sought them with the fly, the cricket, and the worm ; he has waded 
for them, and has frightened them from everv gurgling nook that knew 
them. He has searched in vain for those inexhaustible fishing-grounds 
of Ethan Booth, the sly old village Nimrod, who drops in at the village 
store evenina: after evenins; with his long willow string laden with his 
day's haul of trout -flesh. But only Ethan knows their swimming 
grounds. If you chance upon him in your walks it is generally near 
some running brook, and you may rest assured that he has spotted you 
from afar, and has hidden his pole in the grass, while he fusses about 
the fence near by, adjusts a rail or two, or trims up the lay of the old 
stone wall, whistling the while he works, and when you come upon him 
he will start and say, " Lor', haow you scairt me !" 

But there was a youth who proved too enterprising even for Ethan. 
He hung around the house, and followed Ethan afield as he stole out 
across lots at sunrise. He saw him take his fish-pole from its hiding- 
place along the fence, and trail it slyly through the weedy pasture lot. 
He tracked him for a mile upon the hill-side, and at last shadowed him, 
and surprised him at his game, in the midst of his accumulating string 
of beauties that lay wriggling on their osier in the water. When at last 
that sudden yell rung out from among the weeds close by our Nimrod 
almost toppled off his perch upon the cross-rail. Ethan was provoked, 
and showed it ; but he took in the situation philosophically, and made 
the best of it. 



88 



HI G H WA YS A ND HYU 'A YS. 




" Say, Bub," he inquired, 
with a Hstless yawn that was lu- 
dicrous enough in contrast to his 

, , SHADOWED. 

eager qui vive upon his perch only 

a moment previous, " wut time is't ?" 

" Well, it's about time to give another feller a show now, Ethan." 

" Wa'al, yeu kin hev it 'n' welcome for all me," replied he. "/';;/ jest 

abaout tuckered aout tryin' to work the old hole. I guess I'll be gittin' 



THE SQUIRREL'S HIGHWAY. 89 

home, 'n' try the river agin. I might 'a knowed they wa'n't no pike in 
this 'ere puddle." 

" Come now, Ethan, that's too thin. Have you had any luck .''" 

" Luck .'' Wa'al, I cal'late yer wouldn't see me a-gittin' aout o' here 
ef they wuz enny luck, I kin tell ye," answered he, twisting his line about 
his rod in preparation to depart. 

" No luck, eh .?" continues Bub. " What's that string of trout doing 
down there among the weeds .''" 

"Whar.?" exclaimed Nimrod, agape, and gazing everywhere upon the 
bank excepting at the right spot. 

" Why, down there at the water's edge." 

" Oh, them ! Oh, yeu took them for traout, did ye .? Haw ! haw ! 
W'y, Bub, wut's the matter on ye } Them's live bait. I'm fishin' for 
pickerel, 'n' I vaow they're pesky scarse. I b'lieve I'll go 'n' try the 
river agin," and he lifted his five pounds of "live bait" and started on 
his way, while " Bub " remained to scare the fish, as usual. 

For an hour or more Ethan had been thus monopolizing an impor- 
tant section of our squirrel's thoroughfare. It is the cross-pole of the 
water fence that spans the brook — a point whereon the squirrel and the 
halcyon meet on common ground. It is the chosen highway of our red 
rover to favorite hunting grounds beyond. At the opposite bank of 
the stream he follows the rail through a tangle of feathery willows, and 
up a steep incline beneath dark and sombre pines. Here he looks out 
ahead across a blue and hazy valley, with glistening lakes and silvery 
ribbons of winding streams, as he speeds along beneath the drooping 
boughs of mingled beeches and rock-maples. Now he is out/again 
upon his zigzag course, past clearings with their blackened stumps and 
crimson fire-weed, through rocky, weed-grown pasture-lands and fallows. 
There are a thousand pictures that come crowding as I follow his 
waving banner — peeps between those rails that will linger long after 
they have crumbled to earth. Here a low, fiat marsh, bristling with 
sedge and bulrush — five acres in a mosaic of blossoms and thickset 
alders. There a placid lake, with softly tossing ripples among the 
floating lily-pads and eel-grass. Here a shelving bank, with mulleins 
and bleating sheep. Now a mumbling mill, with saffron-colored foam 
floating from its moss-grown wheel. There is a glimpse up hill, with 
its clang of geese — how doth memory serve to harmonize that discord ! 

Now we follow our little guide where he branches off along the flat- 




topped wall. See how he jumps 

among the woodbine, now dodging out 

of sight behind a copse of elders, or 

skipping beneath a bower of sumacs ! 

Here he is lost beneath a covering screen 

of wild grape, and the startled birds fly out from their interrupted 

tippling from luscious vine clusters. Yonder he appears again upon 



VINE CLUSTERS. 



THE SQUIRREL'S HIGHWAY. 



91 



the half-wall fence among its bouquets of eupatoriums and scarlet milk- 
weeds, where he stops and growls awhile at the exasperated ploughboy, 
until the whizzing stone cuts short his tirade. Away he speeds with 
whisking tail, past road-side lane and cornfield, with its rustling ribbons, 
until at length there conies a sudden pitch through fields of grain, 
where the golden sheen of the billowy wheat chases wave on wave 
across the upland slope. We can hear its whispers as it bends and 
sweeps among the rails, where, if we look closely, we may detect a 
nimble figure sitting on a jutting summit, poising to catch a swaying 
tip that some favoring breeze shall send him ; and how lightly will it 
dance upon its stem when he releases it ! But now again he takes the 
rails, bounds along upon the hollow birchen pole, stops, turns, whisks 
his tail in a last adieu, and disappears. The old fence takes him to 
her heart again. His circuit is completed, and with it mine ends also. 










Across Lots. 



Burly, dozing Iliimblebcc, 
Where thou an is clime for me. 

3|C SfC 3fl jf; 

Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, 

Let me chase thy waving lines ; 
Keep me nearer, me th; hearer, 
Singing over shrubs and vines. 
Flower-bells, 
Honeyed cells, ^ 

These the tents 
Which he frequents 



M. 







"^■ 






^M 



ll«)t niidsummer's petted crone, 
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone. 
Telling of countless sunny hours. 
Long days, and solid banks of flowers. 

Aught unsavory or unclean 
Hath my insect ever seen, 
But violets and bilberry-bells. 
Maple-sap and daffodils, 
Clover, catchfiy, adder's-tongue, 
And brier-roses dwelt among : 
All beside was unknown waste, 
All was picture as he passed." 




— ^i 







V^~ 



3^/ m 





E have followed the 
squirrel around the 
circuit of his fence highway, a thoroughfare 
whose every inch he knows by heart. As the 
courier of a routine tour he is without a peer. But in our present 
random trip across the fields we must needs look elsewhere for our 
guide. We shall find him close at hand. I have bespoken him, and he 
awaits us in yonder tufted blossom-bed, where we shall discover him 
dozing in the lap of luxury, or perhaps surprise him in a mood of all- 



98 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

absorbing industry as he revels among the plumy petals and drains the 
nectar from the blossom-cups. 

His is the random tlight that I would follow; his the rare preroga- 
tive which would be my prototype — 

" Seeing only what is fair, 
Sipping only what is sweet " — 

in this tlight of fancy; recalling a few such episodes as have furnished 
sweets to me in my random walks, and which still invite the bee in 
every meadow, wood, and field. Would that my wings possessed the 
magic* hum that should call the swarm from the busy hive into the 
gladness of these pleasant fields ! 

There is something new to be learned in every square foot of nature, 
if one will only look with open eyes. Indeed, on every hand, 

" Whether we look or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur or see it glisten." 

I have known our lovely fringed orchis {Habcnaria fimbriata) nearly 
all my life, but only recently did I discover that I had looked it in the 
face all these years wath mere half -intelligent recognition — the true 
sienificance of its flower, its most wonderful and vital attribute, had 
escaped me. 

For years I thought I knew all there was to be known about our 
common milk-weed. I knew the savory relish of its early sprouts in 
spring. I knew as well every natural dependent upon its bounty, from 
its small red beetle and striped Danais caterpillar, the woolly herds upon 
its leaf, and jewelled nymph beneath its shadow, to the quivering butter- 
flies which I had so often picked half-tipsy from the heavy nectar of its 
plethoric blossoms. Its floating cloud of silken sheen had always been 
my delight ; and, with its lush, nutritious growth and generous pulse, I 
had often wondered at the apparent neglect and inutility of a weed so 
richly blessed in seeming possibilities of usefulness. I had analyzed its 
flower — had seen the bee at work upon its horns of plenty ; bat, even 
with a'l this considerable acquaintance, "the secret of a weed's plain 
heart'" was yet denied me. I had failed to discover the most remark- 
able feature of the plant — the actual secret of its existence in the 
strange fertilization of its flower by the very insects I had so often seen 
upon it. 



ACROSS LOTS. 



99 



It were a rash man who should say he knows the wild flower when 
he sees it — the violet, the orchid, or columbine. A nodding acquaint- 
ance there may be, but one does not thus become a confidant. 

There are few of us, I imagine, but could call by name the ever- 
lasting flowers that whiten our pasture-lands and clearings, scenting the 
summer air with their nut-like fragrance. But I wonder how many of 
us possess their confidence sufficiently to have discovered the recluse 
that hides among their blossoms 1 




HILL-SIDE STUBBLE. 



The transformation of the insect is a theme which has always pos- 
sessed a strange fascination for me. Even as far back as I can remem- 
ber, while yet the sacred story of the Resurrection was but a weird and 
ghostly picture in my mind — a mind as yet too immature to realize the 
significance of deeper spiritual truth — I am conscious that in the study 
of the insect, in the contemplation of its strange metamorphic sleep, 
and in the figure of the bursting chrysalis, I found my earliest divine 
interpreter. 

" Man cannot afford to be a naturalist," says the wrapt philosopher 
of " Walden," " to look at Nature directly. He must look through and 



lOO HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

beyond her. To look at her is as fatal as to look at the head of 
Medusa — it turiis the man of science to stone." 

Of all mv rambles, with their ever-increasinu; fund of interestins; dis- 
covery, there is none so often followed in the saunterings of my mem- 
ory as that which led me to my earliest introduction to the study of 
entomology. 

It was a day in early June, and nature was bursting with exuberance. 
The \ery earth was teeming with awakening germs — here an acorn, with 
its biformed hungry germ — parody on the dual mission of mortal life 
— one seeking earth, the other heaven ; here an odd little elf of maple, 
with his winged cap still clinging as he danced upon his slender stem ; 
while numerous nameless green things clove the sod, and matted leaves 
and slender coils of ferns unrolled in eager grasp from their woollv 
winter nest. 

But dear to my heart as were these familiar tokens, how quickly were 
they all forgotten in my contemplation simply of a little stone that lay 
upon a patch of mould directly at my elbow, and my wondering eyes 
were riveted upon it, for it seemed as though in the universal quickening 
even this also had taken life. 

I can see it this moment. It moves again, and yet again, until now, 
with a final effort, it is lifted from its setting and rolled away, while 
in its place there protrudes from the ground a chrysalis risen from its 
sepulchre. Filled with wonder, I sit and watch as though in a dream, 
awaiting the revelation from this mysterious earthly messenger, when 
suddenly the encasement swells and breaks, the cerements are burst, and 
the strange shape gives birth to the form of a beautiful moth — a tender, 
trembling thing, which emerges from the empty shell and creeps quiver- 
ing upon an overhanging spray. 

Now followed that beautiful and wondrous unfolding of the winsed 
life — the softly-falling crumpled folds, the quivering pulsations of the 
new-born wings eager for their flight, until at length their glory shone 
in purity and perfection — a trial flutter, and the perfect being took wing 
and flew away ! 

Thus did I become a votary to that science known as "entomology." 
What wonder, then, that it should yield to me in after-life a winged sig- 
nificance, a spirit of unrest that bursts the shell of mere terminology, and 
enjoys a realm of resource not found in books, except, indeed, between 
the lines ? For the entomology which I would seek is not yet written. 



AC J? OSS LOTS. lOl 

and it is beyond my conception that any one among its votaries could 
witness unmoved by its deeper impress a spectacle such as this, or could 
find through the retina of science aione an ample insight. 

Here is a phenomenon that is well-nigh as common in nature as the 
bursting of a bud or the unfolding of a leaf, and yet how rarely is it 
noted ! We have seen that withered leaf upon the sassafras a thousand 
times, and passed it by in ignorance. The leafy hammock of the nettle 
has shielded close its willing captive, not only from the searching scrutiny 
of bird but from our eyes as well. Among the meadow milk-weeds a 
pendent gem of emerald and gold has often touched our unconscious 
hands. And why have we never thought to look beneath that artificial 
tent of the drooping hop-leaf for the rare jewel hanging there ? 

Years ago the tell-tale contour of a nodding leaf upon the wood-nettle 
arrested my attention in a shady walk — a quaint, drooping canopy, formed 
by the cutting of the three main ribs of the leaf close to the petiole. I 
plucked it and looked beneath, and, forgetting the sting, I held my 
breath in contemplation of the beautiful object tliat met my eyes. Won- 
drous aurelia ! Divine mosaic ! Paragon of symbolic art ! Yc famed 
emblazoners of ancient Egypt — elect of Memnon ! illuminators to the 
god of Thebes ! — where is the glory of your gorgeous gilded sepulchres .'' 
mockeries of the chrvsalid, vour roval oHtterins; encasements of vour 
mummied princes, queens, and kings.? How dots that mortal splendor 
pale beside this tiny marvel of divine illumination! 

Ye modern revellers in jewels and fine gold, behold how idle is your 
worship ! Where the gaud among all your idle trinketry, with its mi- 
metic modelling and rare embellishment of superficial art, that is not 
bedimmed like dross in the presence of this perfect master-work beneath 
the nettle-leaf t 

W^herefore, ye craftsmen of gems and precious metals, that in all your 
idle mimicries of Natures forms, your parodies of her "beetles panoplied 
in gems and gold," your mockeries of her unoffending butterflies and 
libels on her helpless flowers, your jewelled travesties of dew-drops upon 
the sculptured leaf or pearl upon the mimic shell — wherefore have your 
eyes escaped this matchless prototype .'' Look upon this pendent brill- 
iant beneath the leaf — this heaven-illumined mummy of Vanessa, Cyn- 
thia, or Danais. Here are lessons of form and color that may well 
employ your skill and exalt 3'our passion for mimetic art, even though 
they shame your transcripts to the dust. Here are palpitating opals — 



102 



n IG n WAYS AND BYWAYS. 



lustrous ashen films smouldering with living fires of iridescent light. 
Here are marvellous, glittering mosaics — beautiful unsolved hieroglyphs 
of another world. Here are rainbow-tints of nacre borrowed from the 
mother of no earthly pearl, symbols and characters in nameless filmy 
hues, underlaid with malachite and emerald, glistening in frost of silver, 
or embossed in burnished gold, pure and refined beyond mortal skill, 
untainted with alloy. Verily the dross of material earth yields no such 
precious metals. 

Well may the alchemists of old, blinded by their worldly avarice, 
have souQfht their elusive talisman in these brilliant emblems. Well, too, 
might they have discerned without the test that ethereal metals such as 
these defy aught but the mental crucible ; that they but elude the flame 
to ascend and mingle with the light that gave them being — bright prom- 
ises from Heaven ; te.xtures woven from sunbeams and wrought into 
this evanescent winding-sheet lent to the slumbering aurelia, a brief 
heritage from the spirit-world. 




Here we come upon that blessed meadow outburst — my infinite 
delight — where lifetime offerings bend on swaying stalks, and Nature's 
book is bursting with its beckoning leaves — 

" Only a bank of simple weeds, 
Of tangled grass and slender wind-blown reeds ; 
And yet a world of beauty garners there." 



A realm of singinij shadows and filmv wings, where 

" There's never a blade or a leaf too mean 
To be some happy creature's palace." 



ACROSS LOTS. 



103 



Here, along its edge, we come again upon tliat bed of everlasting, where 
for the hundredth time, hidden within its nest of blossoms, I discover 
that same beautiful emblem, always a suggestive symbol to me ; but 
here among the immortelles it seems, in truth, a prophecy. But how 
often, in its varied forms, is this prophecy thrust upon my vision in my 
daily walks ! and how strangely often would it seem as though it van- 
ished beneath the glance of other eyes ! Do I walk the streets of cruel, 
crowded cities ? They are there. They " make their beds " on tree and 
fence, and upon the lowly tenement. Yea, here do they seem to find 
their chosen resting-place ; and I have beheld them weave their shroud 
among the folds of crape upon the shadowed threshold. Perchance I 
find their testimony along the thoroughfares of wealth woven upon the 
rich facade or gorgeous vestibule — but not long, my fair aurelia. Grim 
irony ! How often art thou forbidden entrance or swept away ! 

I stroll among the " cities of the dead," and they meet me there. I 
have seen the shrouded nymph nestling in the worn inscription — the 
pendent emblem hanging in the sculptured niche, and the new-born 
image creeping on the crumbling tomb, while in a memorable stroll 
not long ago, loitering, as is my wont, in the peaceful confines of the 
village church-yard, the revelation came again. An ancient, tottering 
slab, with closely -lichened surface, seemed to beckon me. I sought 
a piece of broken stone with which to scour the surface, that I might 
learn the testimony thus so effectually hidden, almost with a conscious- 
ness, it would seem, when at last the quaint inscription revealed to me 
these sentiments — and what a strange pathos seemed to lurk amid these 
weird intaglios ! — ■ 

THOV • GVISE • OF • MORTAL • FLESH • 
PAVSE • 6- ■ READ. 



A Handful! of Dvst lyes buri<^d hear 
Last vestige of what Earth held de" 
What I am now So yov m\st be. 
Then ponder well my words to thee. 
0000 

LAY • HOLD ■ ON • LIFE • ACQUIRE ■ WH't ■ MORTAL^ 
CAN. • HEAR • SEE • WITH • DEEP ■ CONCERN. • Y= 
END ■ OF ■ MAN. 



104 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



None but myself can ever know the thrill of that beautiful experi- 
ence when, with mind wrapt for the moment in the heresy of this grim 

tribute from the tomb, my eye chanced to fall 
upon the ground beneath, where among the 



nrx> 



faded grass I 







' YK ENU OF MAN. 



discovered again 

that omnipresent prophecy here 

— an open mummy -case of the 

polyphemous moth, from which its 

life had flown. Such has been the impress of the insect in my daily 

saunterings — such, I hope, it always may be ; for verily it is my belief, 

with " the greatest of metaphysical poets," that 

" He who feels contempt 
For any living thing hath faculties 
Which he has never used — thought with him 
Is in its infancy." 

Nearly every one, it would seem, knows a caterpillar well enough to 
shudder at the sight of it — and often, be it admitted, with some show of 
reason ; but here is a shy recluse among these everlasting-flowers that 
I would disclose in its hiding-place, that all may look upon it. Rarely 
is this insect noticed by the casual eye ; and naturally enough, for it is a 
creature of the darkness, and seldom appears to feed among the leaves 
except at nightfall, secluding itself through the day in a quaint nest 
made from the petals of the everlasting-flowers woven in the meshes of 
a silken web, and hung therewith among the blossom-clusters. Many of 
these nests have doubtless been seen by casual observers and noted only 
as withered clusters swaying in the wind. Indeed, they seem to have 



ACROSS LOTS. 105 

escaped the keener eyes of entomologists as well, for I find no mention 
of them in their books. More often these petal - bowers are hidden 
cosily among the flower-heads ; but I have found many specimens, four 
and five inches in length, hanging pendent beneath. Near the upper 
side a small opening may be discovered ; and if we look within, or tear 
the nest asunder, we surprise the little hermit in its solitude — perhaps a 
formidable-appearing creature, beset with spines, ornamented with yellow 
spots, and banded with belts of yellow and maroon. Such is its more 
common complexion. But occasionally we disclose its sleeping chrysalis 
— an exquisite disguise, that well might win the laurel as a product of 
rare bijoutry. Bright, indeed, is the sleep of this beautiful aurelia, if 
these testimonies paint its dreams ! A pendent form of solid gold, lit 
from beneath with faint flames of opal ; here smouldered and half lost 
beneath a bloom of ashy silver, or flooded with a tinge of emerald ; 
inlaid here with iridescent pearl, or merged into a molten mosaic of 
burnished gold. There are strange devices in enamel of golden-green, 
and all chased and sculptured with ornate art that defies the lens, and to 
which the microscope is but an eye to infinite realms of exalted splendor. 

Such is the rare jewel that hangs among the immortelles. 

Thus, one by one, did the weeds and vines, the folded leaves and 
blossoms, yield their confidences to me. But, alas ! as the years stole on, 
laden with their accumulated store of experience and discovery, there 
came with them a host of troublous thoughts and testimonies inexpli- 
cable. The chrysalis had become my ensign — my unfailing promise of 
the butterfly — and the butterfly the imago of my aspirations. But on 
a fated day I saw my idol arrested in its flight; pounced upon in mid- 
air, torn to pieces and devoured before my eyes by its arch-enemy, the 
sand-hornet. I was suddenly brought to realize, in my boyish fashion, 
that the glory of the gorgeous wing was after all, but dust — that this 
member must soon cease to flutter, and my emblem of the soul " must 
needs perish and inherit the doom, the oblivion of all flesh." 

Neither was this all ; for, as the record of discovery increased, per- 
plexities innumerable seemed thrust upon me. My caterpillar still lived 
his life of luxury ; my chrysalis shone resplendent in its gold ; but my 
butterfly, alas ! not only did it perish in the dust, but, woe is me ! it 
finally ceased to appear at all. For, look i false promise — the gold upon 
its fair encasement has faded in corruption, the pe^trl has d^ap^peared, 
and where I had learned to watch for the coming ''reisu'rre'ctio-A -there 



io6 



HIGHWAYS AND B VIVA VS. 



TESTIMONY Of^THE 
IMJrCfRTELL'ES. 



now appears a nameless shape — a ghoul — an impish 

throng, perhaps, that gnaw their waj' through the 

[A prison sepulchre, and leave in their flight but an 

empty tainted shell — a hollow mockery, whereon 

is yet discernible the irony of folded wing. 

If in the figure of the butterfly we welcome 
the accepted sign of immortality, personating 
the flight of the soul, what, then, is the spir- 
itual correspondence of this dread ichneumon of 
the insect world by whose demoniacal inter- 
ention the identity of the perfect being is 
nihilated, absorbed, and replaced by this 
unnatural progeny ? 

The parasite is omnipresent, and 
often, it would seem, almost omnip- 
otent. It appears in endless 
?--- ' disguises ; an army that peo- 
ples the air we breathe, and that 
sows broadcast the seeds of de- 
struction. No creature of the insect 
world is exempt from its attack, no armor 
is invulnerable, no shelter a pavilion. The 
dweller deep within the solid tree-trunk 
feels the destroying thrust ; the refugee 
;5 "within the walled circumference of a 
^ nut" is completely at the mercy of his 
enemy ; and even the microscopic embryo in 
the atom of egg is a common prey. 

But the vegetable kingdom knows their 
dominance as well. Have you seen that 
swollen bud upon the osier, the abnormal 
scaly cone upon the cordate willow, that 
thorny ball upon the brier-rose, or the crimson berry 
on the cinque-foil .-' These are but the wily pranks of 
some insinuated egg, and of its artful elf that holds the 
growing fibre in the bondage of its whim. 
'. '''-Strange mimic fruits are borne on leaves bewitched, 
" tlie tinv bud becomes a tessellated tenement, the stem 




ACROSS LOTS. 107 

a bastioned castle. But not invulnerable, for these in turn are invaded 
by the parasite with weapons from without. New guests are ushered 
into the tempting domiciles, unbidden patrons that proceed to eat the 
host at his own table, and then usurp his luxury. 

What with its parasites and its high-handed murderers, it would seem 
that nature were a vast arena (a mirror held up to the world of human 
life) where the mighty oppress the weak, and that universal massacre 
and destruction were the key-note of the world's economy. The blue- 
bird and the lark, beloved of poets, perpetuate their song by carnage. 
Murder is the secret impetus of the swallow's glancing flight. The 
happy-hearted vireo carols his overflowing jubilee from the leafy tree-top 
— an endless offering of grace, each lovely note the tell-tale of a massa- 
cre, for blood is in his eye. 

Consider for the moment how " these thorns upon the rose of life " 
pierced the heart of " our Lord Buddha" when, 

" Looking deep, he saw 
How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him, 
And kite on both ; and how the fish-hawk robbed 
The fish-tiger of that which it had seized ; 
The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did chase 
The jewelled butterflies ; till everywhere 
Each slew a slayer, and in turn was slain, 
Life living upon death. So the fair show 
Veiled one vast, savage, grim conspiracy 
Of mutual murder — from the worm to man, 
Who himself kills his fellow." 

Who shall solve these dark problems of nature ? for it is not alone 
the hieroglyph of chrysalis or the painted wing, the figure of resurrected 
moth or the mockery of the blighted sepulchre, that tests our thought, 
but every living or inanimate thing in some form invites our seeking, 
even as in the new-born fern it takes an open symbol, and mimics the 
interrogation point. 

There are stupendous questions even in leaves, cjuestions yet unan- 
swered in opening buds, questions that glisten in the air on plumy seeds, 
riddles in rainbow colors imprisoned in a petal, and an endless catechism 
hangs on many a fragile stem. 

These problems greet us everywhere ; and often iWay \\'e find them, 
easy lessons for the novice — acrostics, as it were, answecfed in the askilig. 



io8 



HIGHWAYS AXD BY WAYS. 




l-ltl.U UOUCJUEI. 



You are sitting, perhaps, beneath the maple on the hill-side. A small 
dead twig protrudes from the foliage directly at your elbow. How deli- 
cate '-theygrdy^tiHte upon its bark! See the scarred joints from which 
the' "Opposite" leaves have fallen, and note this tiny tuft of light-green 



ACJiOSS LOTS. 109 

lichen, and this double bud upon the swollen tip. Perhaps you strive to 
pick -it for a closer look, when, lo ! it moves. It is a caterpillar, and you 
are bound to admit, in simulation such as this, an obvious intention. 

Again, a brilliant moth comes hovering swiftly toward you, flashing 
like a scarlet meteor in its flight. Suddenly it makes a fluttering dive, 
and alights upon the gray rock at your feet, and is gone. Had the 
granite bowlder absorbed the insect it could scarce have more effectu- 
ally disappeared. In vain you search its lichened surface for that brill- 
iant glow, little knowing that your eyes have rested on the object of 
your search a dozen times, and that your hand is even now almost in 
contact with that livinsf coal which but smoulders for a moment beneath 
the ashes of its covering wings. 

These are but types of Nature's lavish hints, concessions to the 
superficial eye. Self-evident truths, and involving no mental tax, we 
readily accept them. But how rarely do we seek the testimonies that 
are hidden from our view — indeed, more often only veiled behind a 
gauzy petal, wrapped within the " cradle of a leaf," or nestled in the 
chalice of a blossom ! 

Truly has the rapt follower of our " bumblebee " attested 

" There was never mystery but 'twas figured 
In the flowers." 

Why should the starry blossom of the fringed mitella seek the snow- 
flake as its model .'' why the fluttering orchid cocjuette with the butter- 
fly .? why this single violet with a spur.? why the sweet- tipped cornu- 
copias of the columbine .'' What elf took pity on the painted-cup, and 
decked its leaves with the brilliant scarlet denied its hidden flower } 
Did he send the tiny winged mignon to seek the creeping cincjue-foil, 
learn the disappointment of its yellow blossom, and with magic needle 
thread those crimson beads upon the fruitless stems .? 

The dandelion spreads its galaxies upon the lawn — a rival firmament. 
Who shall be the true interpreter of this " El Dorado in the grass," this 

" Dear common flower that grows beside the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold ?" 

Why the quick concealment of its smothered glow ? Is it with con- 
scious shame that this bending stem, mantling with crimson blush, with- 
draws its faded gold, and hides beneath the lowly leaves ? or may it be 



I lO 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



with patient consciousness of that coming miracle, when, freed from its 
cumbrous dross, it shall rise again perfected in its beauty, transfigured 
as a vision to the new-blown faces crowding humbly at its feet? 

Who shall despoil those cloistered walls of 
blue, and learn the secret of the 
gentian's chastened heart ? 
The veiled magnolia, too — 
was ever else than fragrance 
found in the whisper of 
that sweet breath 
floating from its il- 
lumined prison cell ? i-^^s 
Why should the iris 
shield its gold, 
or the twin- ^^^^-~iv 
leaved colts- 
foot seek to 
screen its flower? 
Why indeed, 
my humble 

birthwort, unless from 
wounded pride lest the world should 
chance to see thy grovelling offspring ? 
Call these but idle bits of fancy. Name 
them what you will. They are not mine. 
They are but echoes of a still small voice 
from the heart of Nature, and I lay them humbly at her door 
— echoes of whisperings so distinct and loud that I can but 
wonder with pity at that apathy which should fail to hear, or 
hearing, pause to listen. 

Once I heard an orchid say, " Why do my petals simulate 
the swan ? Why does my blossom twirl upon its stem, and 
yet unfold again with faded bloom ?" Another, long before 
me, heard that self-same voice — a great high-priest of Nature, 
one who "took no private road," but looked "through nature up to 
nature's God." He yielded to the invitation of that mysterious flower; 
he won its confidence, and has since made known, to the wonder of 
the scientific world, the revelation that had lain screened behind a petal. 




.MACNOI.IA;,. 



ACROSS LOTS. 



1 1 1 





awaiting through the ages for its chosen confidant and disciple — a reve- 
lation that reads Hke the mystic chronicle of some realm of wonder- 
I land, illumined with that supernal lamp, in truth, . 

" the light which never was on sea or land." 
1 Here among this blossoming tangle an- 

other old acquaintance claims our recog- 
nition, shedding its spicy fragrance as we 
press among its foliage ; but not for thee, [ 
thou seeker after similes, for it tells a r . 

worldly tale. This is the aromatic ] ^ 
tansy — a name long since supplanted ^ 

in my mental botany by the more sig- 
nificant if less general title of "Aunt 
Huldy's favorite," an herb whose steeped 
infusion, otherwise ycleped " a blessed mixt- 
ur," this aged crone believed to possess the 
talisman of earthly immortality. But 
Aunt Huldy was a fickle 
" creetur," and had many 

the 
and 
yarrow in their various potions 
soups, etc., she literally fed 
upon ; and then there was 
the boneset, and the snake- 
root, her chief godsend, of 
whose mysterious habitat she 
alone possesscjd the secret. 
This latter plant, season after 
season, it is believed, supplied 
the coffers of this village 
-^L & simpler to the tune of 

,>- ~ i a whole year s neces- 

''^'' sities. Every handful of 

this herb meant to her a pre- ,„,. 

cious equivalent of coin at the vil- 
lage store, for the Virginia snakeroot was, and is to this day, a trusty 
stand-by in most New England villages. 




among 



favorites 
" yarbs." Sweet-fern 




ftSlfc 




112 HIGinVAYS AND BYWAYS. 

He is no New-Englander, certainly, who has never heard of "snake- 
root tea;" but who is he that has ever seen aught of the vegetable but 
the black and wiry roots ? There are, probably, few of our native plants 
represented in the materia mcdica, and so commonly in use, that are as 
little known in their natural state of growth, and, judging from the reve- 
lations of my own native town, the explanation is not a difticult one. 
At best this plant is far from common in New England. It is notably 
fastidious in its selection of habitat, and those possessed of the knowl- 
edge of this hunting-ground are seldom prone to ventilate their botany. 
Indeed, the \'illage botany class is usually narrowed down to one — the 
simpler. Did the snakeroot but chance to reverse the order of nature, 
and grow with its roots above-ground, we might take the visible hint of 
the fibrous threads in our bowl of "tea" and give intelligent search, even 
though it had a showy flower — a label, as it were — to fix in our memory, 
by which we might " spot " it among the herbage. But the snakeroot is 
a modest benefactor and model of charit)- — docs not placard its wares 
nor parade its virtues. 

Like its cousin the wild ginger, the blossoms of this herb are insig- 
nificant affairs, small, bashful things that hang their heads and hug close 
to the ground at the skirts of the parent stem. As a flower it is almost 
a curiosity, and is rarely seen except by herbalists or students of botany; 
and its leaf — well, in those days I never could discover that it had such 
a thing as a leaf. How often did I seek for some such glimpse among 
my newly-purchased package ! — something tangible, a hint that should 
guide me in my daily search in wood and field ; for I knew full well 
that of all the native drugs at the village store the snakeroot was the 
chief desideratum, and I also knew that the prescription trade in this 
commodity was entirely supplied by the vigilant Aunt Huldy. Day 
after day her familiar stooping figure, with scarlet hood, might be seen 
at the medicine counter as, with knowing wink, she unfolded her apron 
and disclosed those bunches of fibrous roots. And more than once an 
eager small boy, I remember, pressed close upon her elbow in hopes of 
a glimpse of something green among that tangle : roots, but never a sug- 
gestion of stem, leaf, or flower. These tell-tale signs, you may be sure, 
were carefully eliminated, even to the last shred. And when I observed 
that daily stipend passed over the counter to the miserly old dame, and 
saw the precious lucre rolled carefully in the old red handkerchief, and 
stowed away next her heart, as she mumbled her incantation, witchery, 



ACJiOSS LOTS. 



I I 




THE SIMPLER S FAVORITE. 



or what not, I became suddenly 
convinced that this sort of thine 
was an imposition. "Anti-mo- 
nopoly" became my cry, and I 
organized myself a party of one 
to put down this great injustice. 
I determined to unlock the mys- 
tery. But this was impossiKe 
without a key. Could I but get 
a leaf ! Then a happy thought 
struck me, and I sought assist- 
ance from my botany — almost 
my first impetus to turn its 
leaves ; and while I am 
conscious that in this 
early essay those pages 
seemed little less than 
Greek to me, I remember 
feeling as I read that, with 
its petioled, hastate - cordate 
leaf, and apetalous flower, with 
gynandrous stamens, sessile, 
adnate, extrorse anthers, and 
trilobate, truncate stigma, etc., 
the Virginia snakeroot ought to 
make considerable of a sensa- 
tion in its neighborhood, and I 
sallied forth with renewed confi- 
dence of success. I souofht out 
several suspicious-looking plants 
that seemed to look rather ex- 
trorse, or gynandrous, or other- 
wise formidable ; but it availed 
me little ; and after making sad 
havoc among the weeds on right 
and left, tugging at stalks of bu- 
gloss, spikenard, ginseng, and a 
long companion list, turning up 



114 



HIGH \VA YS A ND B Y W A YS. 




a tap-root here, a bulb or 

tuber there, I at leni^th sfave 

up the search in disgust, and, 

still undaunted, resolved upon a 

more practical course. 

It was well known that Aunt 
Huldy took her walks daily. No 
one seemed to know whither she 
went, and to those curious ones who 
watched for her return there was little 
satisfaction, for she always came home 
empty-handed, or at best with a sprig 
of yarrow, tansy, or equally common herb, while on the following morn- 
ing, bright and early, she would appear at the village store and empty 



THE MYSTERIOUS ERRAND. 



ACROSS LOTS. 



I I ' 



an apronful of these aromatic roots upon the counter, duly receiving 
the usual payment therefor. 

This oave rise to the orencral belief that the snakeroot was one of 
her garden crops. But I knew differently. It was a crop that was 
gathered somewhere among the mountain woods. Just where, she only 
knew, and there was but one way of finding out her secret, and this way 
I had resolved to take at the first opportunity. And here fortune 
favored me ; for while walking home in the dark, returning from a swim 
at ." the willows" with the village boys, taking a short-cut through a 
lonely wood, I was startled by an ominous crackling of twigs some yards 
ahead. I stopped and listened; it became more and more distinct, until 
at length a shadowy form emerged from the bushes, and crossed my 
path only a few feet in advance of where I stood. It was the figure 




of a woman bent with age, and in the light of a favoring moon-ray I 
discerned the scarlet hood. It was Aunt Huldy, and her face was set 
toward the mountain path. Here was my golden opportunity, and I 
embraced it. She led me a long chase, and more than once I trembled 
in my shoes as I crouched behind some tree or dropped among the 
weeds, observing her stop, motionless as a statue, while she listened, with 
the opening of her hood turned directly toward me. Her low, mumbling 
voice was an incessant accompaniment, and every now and then I could 
almost catch a word or two in higher cadence among the weird mono- 
tone. At length she led me across a scrubby pasture lot, from this into 
a dark, wet wood road, and out again into an open clearing. Here she 
paused, seated herself upon a stump, and I watched for developments. 
But she was immovable, and apparently had only stopped to rest and 
reconnoitre. Satisfied that all was well, she resumed her walk, varying 



Ii6 



JUG inVAYS AXD BVirAVS. 







^-*^^ 



AUNT Hri.DY. 



luT mumbling monotone 
by a c[uict, grating laugh 
that seemed less like a 
human utterance than the 
distant laughter of a loon 
hoarse with age. • 

Thus I dogged her 
footsteps for nearly a 
mile, when she suddenly 
seemed to slacken her 
pace. She had approach- 
ed the edge of a wood 
bordered with dark hem- 
locks, beyond which the 
moon shone at its full. 
The jutting tips of ,the 
everorreen foliaa^e were 
sharply cut in the moon- 
light, but all below was 

^ lost in a deep dark 
.^ , shadow thrown 

"" far out upon 

the chaparral. Into this 
shadow my mysterious 
guide disappeared, and 
more than once I thought 
I had lost her in its gla- 
mour, until at last my cu- 
riosity met its reward, as 
I saw her emerge into a 
moon-ra}' and pause be- 
fore a large flat stone, 

where she stood and listen- 
ed as before, looking toward 
me out of the eloquent shadow of 
that hood. Then she stooped, grasped the 
edge of the stone, and, with a wild, unearthly 
croak, rolled it from its place. In a moment 






ACROSS LOTS. II7 

more she was down upon her knees before it, and I could plainly 
detect the eager motion of her busy hands. Now she is up again ; she 
replaces the stone, hobbles to a clump of weeds and plucks a handful, 
and turning again upon her path, begins her homeward journey. 

I can readily recall my breathless suspense as she hurried by and 
almost brushed against me in my retreat beneath the elders, and I re- 
member well the startling, pallid face, with its sharp-cut shadows of the 
moonlight. There was something intensely weird and uncanny in this 
aged figure prowling by herself on this lonely mountain-slope, and those 
mumbling, broken utterances here seemed more than ever like the 
mystic incantations of the sorceress which nearly every one supposed 
them, until upon this eventful night I caught their import from the grin 
of those withered lips. How quickly did that mysterious spell vanish 
beneath the revelation ! 

" Find 'em, kin they } Well, let em try on't. Ha ! ha ! ha !" — the 
closing refrain being prolonged into a loon-like laugh in a high, broken 
voice that found me listening for an answering challenge from the sleep- 
ing lake that lay silvered by the moon in the valley below. " Aunt 
Huldy knows whar to git em," I heard her say as she swept by. 

Ah, my deluded dame, be not too loud in thy exultation, for shadows 
have ears, and this night thy monopoly shall end ! There are sermons 
in stones, neither does the cunning artifice of those loose-lying sprigs of 
tansy and yarrow half conceal the rounded weight in the apron below. 

I sometimes wonder how I could have withstood the temptation of 
jumping out upon Aunt Huldy and frightening her half to death with 
a wild war-whoop, but when I consider further I am conscious of that 
overawing suspicion as to the exact status of this old crone. I remem- 
ber she shed an atmosphere of chill from her garments on that night, 
and I dare say I entertained a sense of dread lest, by the pointing of 
her skinny finger and an accompanying hiss, she should change me to 
a toad or lizard on the spot. 

But soon she was lost to eye and ear. I crawled from my conceal- 
ment, and sought that stone with an eagerness almost akin to her own, 
and the evidences which I found beneath told conclusively the story of 
this shrewd scheme of duplicity and profit, for here lay the withered 
stalks and leaves of the precious herb, safely concealed, and a single 
tell-tale cluster of the spicy roots, which in some unaccountable way 
had escaped her clutches. 



Il8 • HIGHWAYS AAD BVIVAYS. 

Of course the spot was visited on the following- morning by an exult- 
ant small boy with a big basket. Hut perhaps it is unnecessary to add 
that its returning weight never proved a burden. For, even with his 
"key" in hand, no opportunity offered for its use. No single plant Jiad 
escaped the grasp of those gleaning fingers or the fate of that flat 
rock. Small boy, thou couldst have done better on that morning, for 
even then, not half a mile away, another stone was " loading up " for a 
nightly pilgrimage ! 

Here comes to mind among mv "waving lines'" a twinkling nest of 
diamonds among the bogs, bathed in flashing aureoles of emerald and 
ruby, birthplace of a million sunbeams. Who has seen the scintillating 
sun-dew hung full with beads of crystal } Let such bestow their char- 
ity upon him who should think to call its faintest semblance from his 
pencil-tip. 

See this dazzled fly, that with hovering buzz alights upon those 
tempting drops. Why this eager, clinging touch of the hungry fila- 
ments that hold their struggling prisoner dying in their grasp ? Who 
cast this cruel spell upon our delicate drosera that impels this life of 
carnage, and yet bedews its fringes with incessant weeping } 

Near by, perchance — a fit companion — the bacchanal sarracenia lifts 
its fated cup. Strange tyrant! How livid the downcast face of that 
hideous flower, that stalks among its lairs, and seems to gloat upon the 
victims of its poisoned cups ! Here is a pit whose depths are yet un- 
fathomed, a fated leaf whose deadly secret has been sought in vain, a 
charnel-house from which no voice has yet been heard, and yet how 
readily do we " tread on it with our clouted shoon," and dismiss it with 
a mere smile of humor and curiosity, that ready refuge of the superficial 
mind ! To such the rose is cherished for its sensuous loveliness. In 
its fragrance and its beauty there is reason for its being. To such the 
noisome hermit of the marsh, the swamp-cabbage flower, but blooms for 
the gaze of toads and frogs and creatures of the boggy ooze, fit compan- 
ion for the lizard and the dwellers of the mud. Uncouth children, such 
as these are called, conceived by Mother Nature in her trespasses of 
revelry, outbursts of her latent playfulness and waywardness, eccentrici- 
ties for the idle amusement of humanity, or, in fine — why not .' — mani- 
festations of a certain sort of divine humor ! 

Who has not seen this lowly tenant of the bogs, and wondered at 
its worthless life ? Many of us, no doubt, have had our little laugh at 



ACROSS LOTS. 



119 



'*^v 




the tiny eager fist of the catchfly closing upon its cap^ 
tive ; the quaint pendent pitchers of nepenthes, and the 
strange, inflated calyxes of aristolochias, have doubtless 
brought a smile as we have passed them in the tropic 
of the conservatory; but how often have we glanced 
behind, and detected their parting look of pitying com- 
passion at our shallowness and ignorance ! To such 
a retina as this Nature must forever remain a r^ 

blank — a close -lipped shell, even though with a '■'^■ 
fair exterior, yet shielding close the pearl within ; 
a story without a beginning, instead of a story 
without an end. Nature is "a jealous goddess," 
and demands the homage of the " inward eye." No 
pedant need expect a 
revelation from her 
fair page. Approach- 
ed in such a spirit, and, like the 
sensitive mimosa rudely touched, she shuts 
her leaves. No flower of hers is born to the 
predestined martyrdom of a superficial eye. 
Has this snowy petal a spot upon its white- 
ness, it has its correspondence and its deep 
significance. There are no accidental blots on 
Nature's book. Seek and ye shall find its 
hidden truth. Does the trefoil fold 
its palms at night- fall, or the 
primrose light its lamp at dusk ? 
It is not their fault that 
they bequeath no 
blessing to 
you, but be- 
cause ye 



••OS;.. 



r 



f 




"»' 
/# 



I20 HIGHWAYS AND BY 11' A VS. 

are blind. " Eyes have ye, but they see not." They are unblest of 
that deeper inspiration which seeks Nature with the bowed head and 
bended knee of Wordsworth when he avows, 

" To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

For there are eyes and eyes — eyes that merely look, and others " made 
for seeing" — "windows of the soul." Else the world of nature had 
never known the heritage of such names as Darwin, Hu.xley, Agassiz, 
Huber, Swammerdam, Sprengel, Linnaeus, White of Selborne, and the 
rest of their great fraternity. The vital mission of our " bumblebee," 
the lessons of the ant, the wonders of the orchid, and the deeper, 
more mysterious errand of that 

" Painted populace 
That live in fields and lead ambrosial Jives," 

had yet remained in obscurity; the humble earthworm and its special 
mission still lain buried beneath our feet, sole mask for the luring fish- 
hook, the testy prey of robin on the lawn, or quarry of dark-dwelling 
mole beneath the sod ; and we above as darkened and as blind as they. 

Philosophical astronomy may picture to horrified humanity the re- 
sultant chaos and annihilation of a sun extinguished, or indeed of the 
merest deviation in the orbit of a single planet, but who could foretell 
the direful consequences that might follow from the extermination even 
of a single species of these tiny "meadow tribes" — yea, even the mos- 
quito, forsooth ! — when, most humble of them all, the lowly earthworm 
rises to such lofty proportions of importance in the world's economy } 

Thanks for this last token of a life of meek devotion, a humility that 
could stoop to learn even at the burrow of the earthworm, and which 
should find a period of thirty years too short a time in which to plead 
the cause of this most despised and lowliest of animated creatures. The 
lawn and meadow, the mountain and the mighty river, take on a new 
sisnificance and a new religion beneath the lessons of this last volume 
of the lamented Mr. Darwin. 

"When we behold," he remarks in conclusion, "a wide turf-covered 
expanse, we should remember that its smoothness, on which so much 
of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having been 
slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous reflection that the whole 



ACROSS LOTS. 121 

of the superficial mould over any such expanse has passed, and will 
again pass every few years, through the bodies of worms. The plough 
is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions, but 
long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed, and still 
continues to be thus ploughed, by earthworms. It may be doubted 
whether there are many other animals which have played so important 
a part in the history of the world as have these lowly -organized 
creatures." 

That charming naturalist, White of Selborne, from whom Mr. Dar- 
win received his earliest inspiration in this field of study, has declared, 
as a result of his own investigations, that " without worms the earth 
would soon become cold, hard-bound, and void of fermentation, and 
consequently sterile." 

They are Nature's own gardeners and tillers of the soil. They peo- 
ple the sod, and feed the roots of plants with fertilizing elements of 
debris, which they draw into their burrows or bury beneath the rich 
humus of their castings. In many parts of England, we are told, new 
subsoil to the weight of over ten ions per acre is thus brought to the 
surface each successive year. Nor is this all. Washed by rains, this 
vast accumulation of mould is swept from the sloping hill-sides, denud- 
ing the surface, and at length even affecting the contour not only of 
hills but mountains ; thus it is poured into the streams, thence into 
great rivers, which, finally, may be turned from their natural channels 
by this gradual deposit, and the consequent raising of their beds to the 
level of the adjacent land. Again, in the form of dust this mould is 
blown by the wind ; and many instances are known where ancient build- 
ings, and even ruined cities, have thus been buried beneath the castings 
of the earth-worm. 

Under the ministry of such books as these one may well look upon 
his path with solicitude of his footprints, and reproach the memory 
of those rampant, boyish days when nature seemed a vast menagerie 
sent for him to tame, when every bird was but a living target, " name- 
less without a gun," every insect a gewgaw for a pin, and every flower 
" a thing beneath his shoon," or a gaud to pluck and throw away. Per- 
chance he may recall that emblematic picture of a tiny apron filled with 
wilting blossoms of the meadow, of the dimpled fists that scarce could 
hold the overflow, and of the idle tears that fell because whole fields 
of beckoninor bloom must still be left behind — fields wherein we shall 



122 



HIGH WAYS AND BYWAY'S. 



walk in after-life, longing vainly for wings, if only to lift us from the 

foot — where 

"In the grass sweet voices talk;" 



carnage of a crushing foot — where 



where every clod 



" Springs to a soul in grass and flowers ;" 



and where one feels the impress of a sentiment sublime, which might 
almost take the voice of Buddha: 

" Kill not, in Pity's sake, and lest ye slay 
The meanest thing upon its upward way." 













m. 







Among Our Footprints. 




" He hail felt the power 
Of Nature, and already was prepared, 
By his intense conceptions, to receive 
Deeply, the lesson deep of love which he 
Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught 
To feel intensely cannot hut receive. 

Oh, then how beautiful, how bright, appear'd 

The written Promise ! He had early learn'd 

To reverence the X'olume which displays 

The mystery — the life which cannot die. 

But in the mountains did he feel his faith : 

There did he see the writing, all things there 

Breathed immortality, revolving life. 

And greatness still revolving, infinite ; 

There littleness was not ; the least of things 

Seemed infinite ; and there his spirit shaped 

Her prospects, nor did he believe — he saw. 

What wonder if his being thus became 

Sublime and comprehensive ? Low desires. 

Low thoughts had there no place : yet was his heart 

Lowly ; for he was meek in gratitude 

Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind. 

And whence they flowed, and from them he acquir'd 

Wisdom, which works through patience : thence he learn'd 

In many a calmer hour of sober thought 

To look on Nature with a humble heart, 

Self-question'd where it did not understand, 

And with a superstitious eye of love." 



,,:)^v,n|*" 





:^ 



f.-..^*. -•,'5 



*^** 




..-<-;te' ■;/ 



i^r^- ■:;";•' 










■/''■'mW 










-fti-. ''-.^,,.'^. -'..f'^ 







l^^'. 






^ 



9% 






\^ 




' I "O one naturally pos- ^mlyl^r^v' 
sessed of a keen and 
searching vision, perpetually edu- 
cated by that continual practice in- 
spired by a love of nature -study, the 
judgment of Thoreau upon the "walkers" of his period, or at least of 



128 HJGJIUAYS AND BY WAYS. 

his acquaintance, wins an emphasized significance, if not an added senti- 
ment of hearty endorsement : " I have met with but one or two persons 
in the course of my Hfe who understood the art of walking— that is, of 
taking walks." It is, moreover, by no means a distinction without a 
difference that prompts the final modifying phrase; for, as a matter of 
fact, if the truth were known, I believe it would be found that the best 
"walkers" were, as a rule, the least accomplished in the art of "takino- 
walks." 

The " art of walking " smacks of the wager and the sawdust course. 
It is the pedestrian's art— physical, headlong, and, from our present stand- 
point, wholly imbecile and unprofitable. Getting over the ground is its 
sole ambition ; and while it were well enough in its proper place, it is, 
unhappily, not confined to the sawdust track. Its sj^irit has become a 
contagion. W'e see it running riot every summer in our country pil- 
grimages. It climbs the mountain for the simple glory of the feat. It 
spins out the miles into the tens and twenties with pride of physical 
endurance, ploughing its way through Nature's fields and meadows' with 
no higher purpose than is involved in the simple question of time and 
speed— seemingly to pass by unheeded or- tread underfoot the greatest 
number of Nature's treasures in the shortest space of time. 

The estimate of Thoreau was certainly rather discouraging; and 
while I am convinced that, had " the course of his life " been happilv 
extended to the present day, he would have found a much more hopeful 
prospect, it is nevertheless true that there is still a "plentiful lack" of 
that deep and sincere appreciation of Nature which is the great secret 
and the chief source of pleasure and profit in the " art of taking walks." 

Not but that there are, at the present day, a large number of people 
who love Nature, and are imbued with a certain enthusiasm in her pres- 
ence; but how often is this enthusiasm identical with that of a child 

of an infant, if you will — over some gayly-colored toy.? 

It is, for instance, but a negative sort of rapture at best which is 
only to be awakened from its lethargy by the glare of a gaudy leaf or 
the sun -glitter of a glistening wing, as by the bauble or the trinket. 
The eye is not only abnormal that should ignore such glaring instances; 
such a retina is not merely unsympathetic and unresponsive : it is blind. 
Who is he that could disregard a brilliant, flaming copse of sumac? and 
who would not experience a sense of pleasure at ha\ing seen it.? The 
fiery spike of cardinal -flower gleaming before us in the field kindles a 



AMONG OUR FOOT]' R I NTS. I 29 

sympathetic flame in the dullest vision. Our eyes are riveted upon it, 
not from any impulse of will or choice of their own, but because that 
glaring torch has signalled them from afar ; while at the same time, per- 
haps, our hands begin to tingle with the sting of some revengeful nettle, 
seeking recognition through another sense, too often the most keen. 

These hints abound in Nature. They are her forcible appeals to the 
apathy of every dormant sense. To many this nettle would be without 
a name were it not thus to inoculate itself in the memory ; and yet, even 
in spite of its impetuous method, you will sometimes meet an individual 
who has been stung a dozen times with a nettle, and is even yet unable 
to know the rascal when he sees it. He will pick those forked "beggar's 
ticks " from his clothing time after time, and still fail to recognize the 
original " beggar " in his native haunts. It would almost seem as though 
some folks carry their eyes in their pocket whenever brought face to 
face with Nature. 

I remember a certain short conversation, in which I took part, last 
summer. It was short of necessity, and cool — perhaps owing to what I 
might call a lack oi fuel. My respondent was a dapper young man, who 
had but just returned, aglow and exultant, from a mountain -climb at 
Conway. He had " done it in two hours ;" and he was, consequently, the 
"lion" of the occasion, on free exhibition to an admiring circle of hotel 
guests and friends. Anticipating the pleasure of the same trip myself, it 
was but natural to question him concerning its features of the pictu- 
resque. 

" Is there a fine view on the farther side of the mountain .?" I asked. 

" Oh yes." 

" What are its particular features ?" 

"Well, I don't remember just what — er — er — mountains, and so 
forth." 

" What sort of a path .?" queried I further, getting down to hard-pan. 

" Oh, nice and shady nearly all the way." 

" Mostly hard-wood trees, I presume .''" 

" Yes — er — er — principally white birch, and — er — some spruce." 

After each reply he would come to a dead pause, and gaze fondly at 
his pedometer. 

In point of fact, as I afterward discovered, the "white birch" growth 
consisted of a single tree near the summit, almost the only solitary birch 
in sight of the path, which was embowered for a mile with beautiful ma- 
9 



I -lo 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



pies and great smooth beeches, 
besides numerous aspens, poplars, 
mountain-ash, and s]:)ruces. The 
"birch -tree" in question was a 
huge, gnarled veteran, in color 
as glaring as a whitewashed 
sign-board, and, in further sim- 
ulation, scarred with sculpt- 
ured names and hieroglyphs, 
among which were the new- 
ly-engraved initials 
of our friend. . 








! V In 'ill his 

) tramp, it seemed, 
he had not seen 
a single flower, and, with the ex 
ception of the "beastly midg- 
ets," not an insect. He 
could remember some whor 



tleberries and raspberries, 



f^ . 



-r \KKi .w > \i • 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 131 

while the only bird he was enabled to recall was "a bright scarlet fel- 
low" — a tanager, of course — bright and fiery enough to have burnt a 
hole in the memory of an imbecile. The whortleberries and raspberries 
had appealed to another sense, more highly cultivated and susceptible ; 
and it was, doubtless, the same tireless craving of those precious jaws 
that led to his discovery of a "spruce-tree," by the lump of chewing-gum 
upon its baited trunk. 

The cause of that faint purple tinge upon the mountain -slope — 
a glow easily discernible even as we conversed on the piazza, tinting 
the chaparral far up the rugged ridge — this he had failed to discover, 
although I happened to know that his path had led him directly through 
its midst, with its dense growth of flowering fire -weed. He could not 
even now explain that "bluish bloom, spreading like a faint reflection of 
the sky upon the plateau of yonder mountain -spur, although it was 
there that he stooped, amid a sea of bright blue-berries, and clutched 
a heavy-laden bush, with which he hurried on to save his precious mo- 
ments, and munch in secret satisfaction at his economy of time. 

He was but a type of a large class of " walkers." How much he 
missed he will never know, nor care to know. On the day following, 
however, I followed his footprints. I had started as one of a party of 
four adventurers on the same tramping-ground ; and I was not greatly 
surprised at an early discovery of the reigning ambition of my three 
companions to " beat the record " of their predecessor. I dismissed them 
with pity, and, it must be confessed, with a sense of impatience only 
half-suppressed ; and, seating myself in the meadow — one of the beautiful 
meadows of the North Conway intervale, through which lay our path — 
I watched their wanton progress, as they crushed and trampled through 
the tangles of the fields, until I lost them among the distant trees. 

It was a fine morning. The meadow-grasses were yet glistening with 
their beads of morning dew, and the rowen clover clusters still held up 
carefully to view in their half-closed palms their wealth of precious gems 
gathered in the shadows of the night ; while, extending from my very 
feet, far, far away above the herbage, the spangled meadows glittered 
with silken gossamers — 

"Those wiry webs of silvery dew that twinkle in the morning air" — 

flashing with their radiance of sun gems, and spreading in the distance 
like a glistening silver sea. 



132 HIGHWAYS AND BYU'AYS. 

The spider is a common object of aversion, but who could henceforth 
entertain a feeling of repugnance for the humble spinner that can weave 
so exquisite a fabric as this, which Nature so showers with her jewels ? 
And as we espy him, within the opening of his silken tunnel, w-aiting 
and watching for a living morsel for that morning appetite, who could 
but wonder at the prospect as it appears to those eight watchful eyes 
as they look out across this bed of diamonds, with now and then its 
dazzling rainbow flashes gleaming from the kisses of a bevy of drops 
shaken from their setting on the web, perhaps by the commotion of 
some "high-elbowed grig" kicking the clover leaves or alighting aloft 
upon the swaying tip of timothy-grass ? 

And now a bee settles above upon the clover blossom — a crystal 
bead is tumbled from its nestling-place, and falls flashing on the sloping 
canopy. Another and another are overtaken in its course, glancing 
down the quivering web in a tiny avalanche of sunbeams, each sending 
forth its parting rainbow gleam as it penetrates the meshes and vanishes 
among the yielding leaves beneath. 

It is a privilege to get down upon one's elbows and study the play 
of light among this spread of jewels. Now a faint filmy aureola glows 
in an iridescent halo about some palpitating drop. See how it winks 
and plays with the twinkling sunbeam, now tinting the air with a melt- 
ing gleam like the hovering spirit of an emerald, ere long chased away 
by a radiant ruby flame, and now an instant of glitter, a spangle of 
light, and its place knows it no more. 

It is a privilege, indeed, to search such a footprint as this, and let 
the eye wander among the infinities of the grassy shadows among which 
it nestles. Yes, it is damp, and you may " catch your death of cold," 
but such were a worthy martyrdom. The colds thus caught are only 
too few. 

I confess to a presumptuous rashness in attempting a reproduction 
of this dewy gossamer, but it is given hopefully, merely as an alluring 
hint. It is the result of a page or two of notes and sketches made 
during that morning walk, faithful even to that little fly that lit so tan- 
talizingly near, rubbing and twisting its toes, brushing down its wings, 
and almost pulling off its head, in its fussy morning toilet. 

It was interesting, too, to watch the alert figure just within that 
silken tunnel, with each separate foot on the qtii vivc for some tell-tale 
tension on those webs. And what is that subtle power of distinction 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 



OJ 



by which those feet could detect the difference between the jostle of a 
falling drop and the touch of a beetle of equivalent weight, even though 
the latter were out of sight, upon some wing of the "pretty parlor" — 
a corner, by-the-way, where the dainty carpet was 
figured with a relief design of white clover bios- ' 
soms ? But no sooner had that beetle touched \ 
the web than our spider was out on a tour of I 
investigation, and more than once I saw him ■ 
shake down a shower of beads below, as , 

he scampered back to his charnel-house 
with his quarry of luckless grasshopper 
or cricket. It was 




curious, too, to see how skilfully 

^ .>j "-\,>;>^|<j- ' - j-jg avoided the javelin of a wasp 

* which had become entangled in his 

A BURIAL. lair — partly, be it admitted, through my 

connivance ; and the care with which he 

confined his attentions well toward the harmless end of his victim was 

truly laughable: now throwing over his unlucky head an entangling 

cataract of floss silk, or now and then taking him unawares by a quick 

assault and an ugly nip in the neighborhood of that slender waist. 

The sequence of this tragedy I did not wait to see, for a large beetle 



134 HJGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

came humming along over the grass, and almost tipped my ear with his 
buzzing wings, and finally alighted near a clump of yarrow close by. 

How often do we hear the query, " What becomes of all the dead 
birds ?" The secret of their mysterious disappearance was half told by 
the buzz of those brown wings, and the other half is welcome to any 
one who will take the trouble to follow .their lead. This beetle is one 
of man's incalculable benefactors. It is his mission to aid in keeping 
fresh and pure the air we breathe. He is the sexton that takes be- 
neath the mould not only the fallen sparrow, but the mice, the squirrels, 
and even much larger creatures, that die in our woods and fields. 

Beneath that clump of yarrow I found just w^iat I had expected — a 
small dead bird — and the grave-diggers were in the midst of their work. 
Already the rampart of fresh earth was raised around the body, and the 
cavity was growing deeper with e\'ery moment, as the busy diggers 
excavated the turf beneath. 

Now and then one would emerge on a tour of inspection, even rum- 
maging among the feathers of that silent throat, and climbing upon the 
plumy breast to press down the little body into the deepening grave. 

These- nature burials are by no means rare, and where the listless 
eye fails to discover them the nostril will often indicate the way, and 
to any one desirous of witnessing the operation, without the trouble of 
search, it is only necessary to place in a convenient spot of loose 
earth the carcass of some small animal. The most casual observer 
could hardly fail to be attracted by the orange-spotted beetles which 
soon will be seen to hover about it. Entomologists assert that these 
insects are attracted by the odor of decay; but from my own humble 
investigations I have never been able to fully reconcile myself to this 
theory. 

Whatever the disputed nature of odors — whether an influence exerted 
by organic atoms carried in the air, or through some system of mys- 
terious vibration, I believe is a problem yet unsolved ; but whatever its 
subtle character, it is entirely under the control of the wind, and is not 
known to travel against the breeze. Yet I have repeatedly seen these 
beetles approach directly from the windward, and drop upon their prey 
as though it were an irresistible magnet hidden in the herbage. 

The specific conception of a sixth sense is beyond the full grasp of 
the human mind. What it should be, to what purpose employed, is a 
theme for wide speculation ; but certain it is that, arguing solely from 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 



135 




the basis of our own endowments, we are 
often confronted with problems whose 
solution would almost seem impossible 
excepting through admitted existence 
of a sixth faculty of sense. These 
mystical manifestations are usually 

classified under the general 
\ term " instinct " — a most con- 
venient refuge for man's in- 
^, capacity and ignorance. 
If it were the ques- 
tion of odor alone 




■.■a Hfe, 



in this dead bird, for 
instance, it would be 
difficult to explain the bee-line 
flight of these humming beetles, 
two of which came swift- 
i:X .^ ly toward me even from 
"^^■^'^ the direction of the 
wind, and drop- 
^^^^ 







y -- 




ON THE SCENT, 



136 



HIGHWA YS A ND B Y IF A YS. 



pcd quickly upon these feathers hidden from sight among the grass. 
Perhaps in such an instance we might imagine that they had been there 
before and knew the way ; that they had noted this clump of yarrow, 
maybe ; but I have observed the fact before when there was every reason 
to believe that no such previous visit had been made. 

I am always glad of the opportunity to watch the progress of these 
meadow burials. And had you accompanied me on that morning walk 
you would have looked with interest at those little undertakers — seen 
that feathery body toss and heave with strange mock- 
ery of life as the busy sextons worked beneath, dig- 
ging with their spiked thighs, shovelling out the 
loose earth with their broad heads, and pulling down 
the body into the deepened cavity. You would 
f_ have been startled too, perhaps, at that bee-like 

buzzing rover the " the devil's-coach- 
horse" that alighted near, with 
jd'J^,- ^^, its lively wriga^lina; tail 

^ "■//st^ff4»ft.ri?ZiI^«--!S^^{~;^^^^ — - . ... , 

m mid -air, and you 
would have smiled, as 
I did, to see the comi- 
cal alacrity with which 
he tilted forward the 
tip of that tail, and 
therewith tucked his filmy 
wings beneath their diminutive 
covers, sniffing the while for that 
same hidden prey among the grass. 
The use of the tails of animals 
has been a subject of much conject- 
ure among naturalists ; but any one who will take the pains to watch 
the wriggling extremity of the staphylinus, as that insect alights from 
flight, will conclude that, in this case at least, it serves a distinct purpose 
and a most important function ; for without its aid those extended wings 
could never regain their original shelter. You will have to look quickly 
too, for, although requiring several distinct processes of folding, the act 
is performed so dexterously as almost to elude detection. 

Both these insects feed on, and deposit their eggs in, carrion ; and 
while the " devil's-coach-horse " is not known to assist in the digging of 




' POOR BEETLE. 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 137 

the grave, he is generally nosing around, I notice — perhaps to enliven 
the dismal proceeding by an air of frisky cheerfulness and comicality. 

The process of burial is swift or slow, depending on the size of the 
dead body, the number of beetles, and the character of the soil. Ordi- 
narily a small bird or mouse is sunk several inches in the ground and 
covered with earth during the space of twenty-four hours. The female 
beetle often conceals herself within the carcass, with which she is in- 
humed, finally emerging after having deposited therein a number of eggs, 
gauged in number to the proportions of the buried carcass. These soon 
hatch into voracious larvae, which devour every particle of decay, appear- 
ing as perfect beetles in the spring, leaving nothing in the ground but 
a clean, white skeleton, whose grave is soon marked in the meadow by 
a tuft of fresh green grass. 

There is still another beetle 
which is commonly met with in 
our rambles. It is of all oth- 
ers " the poor beetle that we "''Iffl 
tread upon ;" for while many 
around beetles are nimble 
of wing and limb, and 
easily elude our vigilance, 
this floundering individual, ^ 
known as the meloe, is not onlv under the glass. 
wingless but fat and helpless as a baby. 

In their proper season it is rarely that I do not discover several of 
these wingless, helpless beetles during the course of my walks. And 
here, among the buttercups and beaten grasses of these footprints, I 
found a pair of them, one of which lay crushed by a careless step, while 
the other, with a sort of pathetic helplessness, moved about its dead 
mate, caressing it with its antennae, and endeavoring by many tender 
efforts to coax it back to life. I picked up the uninjured specimen, and 
dropped it into my insect-bottle to carry home. 

In color the meloe is of a deep indigo-blue, rotund in form — indeed, 
facetiously suggesting a small bluing -bag. When touched it exudes 
from every joint a yellowish liquid, from which habit it is commonly 
known as the " oil-beetle," and by which it will be readily recognized. 

Clumsy and unattractive as this beetle is, it is nevertheless much 
more interesting than one would imagine ; and when, on my return 




138 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

home, I took the insect out of the bottle, and was enabled to relate its 
curious life -history, it was gratifying at least to hear one appreciative 
listener admit that " that bug's young uns were putty smart." 

And he was not mistaken. Briefly told, the history of this common 
blue beetle is as follows : It feeds upon the leaves of buttercups, on the 
ground beneath which the female deposits her eggs, several hundred in 
number. These hatch into minute but surprisingly active larvae, scarcely 
larger than the liyphcn of this page. They immediately crawl up the 
stems of neighboring plants and nestle among the blossoms — one of the 
many " mysteries that cups of flowers enfold." I have seen large num- 
bers of them in a single buttercup. 

Beneath the magnifying-glass this tiny creature is seen to possess 
six long, spider- like legs. They are given to the grub only at this 
early stage of its existence, and for a special and remarkable purpose. 
It is not in quest of honey that this atom seeks the blossom, but merely 
as its lair, in which to lie in wait for its victim. Presently it comes, 
in the shape of a bee that alights upon the flower. In an instant the 
agile meloe jumps upon the body of the intruder, which it clutches 
tightly with those six clasping legs. Thus clinging, it is carried into 
the hive ; and when the bee reaches its cell the meloe releases its hold 
and creeps into its new home, where it finds the plump white bee-grub 
a ready breakfast. By the time the young bee is devoured the meloe 
casts its skin, and assumes the form common to the larvas of many 
beetles, the long legs having disappeared. Thenceforth the insect feeds 
upon the bee-bread stored by its duped foster-mother, until, when fully 
grown, it passes into the pupa stage, and soon re-appears as that guile- 
less innocent tumbling in our foot-path. 

There has always been to me a strange fascination in that great 
wing chorus which goes up from those myriads of sounding timbrels 
among our grassy fields and sedgy marshes — that endless, palpitating 
chord of teeming life which seems to stir the very air in tremulous 
waves as it rises, quivering, above the grass-tips. What a dizzy tangle 
of sounds ! There is the high, shrilling note of the black cricket down 
among the roots, and now the " zip -zip -zee" of those brown striped 
grasshoppers, with their fragile glass thighs and leaf-like wings of gauzy 
green. There is the ever-present undertone of the orchestra of locusts 
tuning their legion of tiny fiddles, while swarms of slender katydids 
creep and sing among the dancing grass-blades. 



AMONG OUR FOOTPR IN TS. 



139 





It is always a joyous pastoral symphony 
to my ears ; but I half suspect that, 
were those members sufficiently 
keen, they might discern in all that 
babel many a cry of terror and 
wail of agony ; for if " the poor 
beetle that we tread upon 
in corporal sufferance feels 
a pang as great as when a 
giant dies," then these grassy 
jungles hide many a cruel 
tragedy, and this singing 
" field is but one vast arena. 
The savage spiders kill their 
thousands every hour; the man- 
gled victims of the wasps and 
hornets sprinkle the ground. 
Low down anions the shadows 









THE INSECT TIGER. 



you might discover 

a fitting emblem — the 

little spotted -spurge, lying 

prostrate, with its stain of blood on every leaf. You may chance to 

hear a single plaintive trill from some tiny climbing-cricket near. It 

is a cadence that has no place in all this din, for he is a pale creature 

of the twilight, and lifts his voice only in the darkness. It was not a 



140 



JUG II \VA VS AND B VIVA YS. 



song, but a cry of terror at some green-eyed monster of a dragon-fly 
that had peered in and surprised him in that cosy hiding-place among 
the blossoms. 

Even as I looked across this Conway meadow my attention was 
arrested by an unnatural motion of the leaves of a niilk-wecd near, and 
on closer scrutiny I saw a large black beetle creeping slyly up the stem 
and out upon a leaf, where an Arcliippiis caterpillar was feeding. In 
another instant the caterpillar was writhing on the ground with a mortal 
wound, while its murderer dropped pell-mell from leaf to leaf in eager- 
ness to finish its deadly work. This was the fierce carnivorous beetle, 
one of the "tigers" of the insect world, a glossy black creature, with 
gilt spots like golden nails in his coat of armor. 

I witnessed another long but unequal battle on that morning be- 
tween a large Mutilla ant and an ungainly grasshopper. The conflict 
lasted fully five minutes, until the grasshopper felt the fangs of the 

Mutilla at the nape of the neck, 
when he readily succumbed. 




V -• "^i^i '/('^'' 'V-^ -^7 'V , AX UNGAINLY VICTIM. 

With such savage murderers forever prowl- 
ing among the shadows, with the nets of the spider spread on every 
hand, and hungry toads and snakes with their prying eyes seeking out 
every nook and cranny, it would seem that life among our singing 
meadows were anything but a round of pleasure. While "for our 
gayer hours Nature has a voice of gladness and a smile," here we look 
upon her joyless face — an expression grim and mysterious as the silent 
Sphin.x. But to the devout listener at those lips there have been re- 
vealed occasional whispers ; and while to him who reads the book of 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 141 

Nature as he runs it verily would seem as though the mark of Cain 
appeared on every page, science tells us — and observation lends its 
verity — that this wholesale slaughter, not only among the insect tribes, 
but throughout all animated nature, is but the wise ultimatum destined 
for the preservation of him who bears "the image of his Maker;" that 
these professional murderers are but Nature's potent allies in her great 
vital scheme of universal equilibrium — harmony born of discord. 

" In the brake how fierce 
The war of weak and strong ! i' th' air what plots !" 

Not even the fluttering butterfly is safe, but is pounced upon in mid-air 
by the great sand-hornet, its wings torn off in mockery, and, thus shorn 
of its glor)', is lugged off to some dark hole in the ground ; and the bee 
returning to its hive is waylaid on the wing,'its body torn open by this 
armed mignon, whose progeny would seem to have held in perpetuity 
the death-warrant from Queen Titania — 

" The honey-bags steal from the humblebees, 
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs." 

This sand-hornet is the greatest villain that flies on insect wings, and 
he is built for a professional murderer. He carries two keen cimeters 
besides a deadly poisoned poniard, and is mailed throughout with in- 
vulnerable armor. He has things all his own way; he lives a life of 
tyranny, and feeds on blood. There are few birds — none that I know 
of — that care to swallow such a red-hot morsel. It is said that not 
even the butcher-bird hankers after him. The toad will not touch 
him, seeming to know by instinct what sort of chain-lightning he con- 
tains. Among insects this hornet has been called the " harpy eagle," 
and nearly all of them are at his mercy. Even the cicada, or drum- 
ming harvest -fly, an insect often larger and heavier than himself, is 
his very common victim. Some one with a grievance and a poetical 
bent has been known to sigh, 

" Happy the cicadas' lives. 
Since they all have noiseless wives." 

But it were not well to trust too implicitly this ideal picture of domestic 
bliss, this "consummation devoutly to be wished;" for in the monopoly 
of this precious prerogative the " happy " head of the house often sounds 



142 



HIGH WA YS A ND B V IF A VS. 



liis own death-knell, and pays the penalty with his head. The fangs of 
the destroyer cut short his tirade, and he is hurried off the scene to 
repent his folly in a dungeon, where he 
expires by degrees — a piecemeal offering 
to the progeny of his murderer. 

Considering these savage character- 
istics of the hornet, it was of especial 
interest to witness such an inci- 
dent as I have here 
pictured, where 
one of these 











-^ 



>,1!'TS 



r 



/ / 







A PROWLEI. 



huge tyrants was ' 

actually captured and 
overpowered by the strat- 
egy and combined efforts of three black ants. 

I had left the meadow^, and was ascending 
a spur of the mountain by the edge of a pine wood, when suddenly I 
espied the hornet in question almost at my feet. He immediately took 
wing, and as he flew on ahead of me I observed a long pendent object 
dangling from his body. The encumbrance proved too great an obstacle 
for continuous flight, and he soon again dropped upon the path, a rod 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 143 

or so in advance of me. I overtook him, and on a close inspection dis- 
covered a plucky black ant clutching tightly with its teeth upon the 
hind-foot of its captive, while with its two hind-legs it clung desperately 
to a long cluster of pine-needles which it carried as a dead-weight. No 
sooner did the hornet touch the ground than the ant began to tug and 
yell for help. There were certainly evidences to warrant such a belief, 
for a second ant immediately appeared upon the scene, emerging hur- 
riedly from a neighboring thicket of pine-tree moss. He was too late, 
however, for the hornet again sought escape in flight. But this attempt 
was even more futile than the former, for his plucky little assailant 
had now laid hold of another impediment, and this time not only the 
long pine-needles but a small branched stick also was seen swinging 
through the air. Only a yard or so was covered in this flight; and as 
the ant still yelled for re-enforcements, its companion again appeared, 
and rushed upon the common foe with such furious zeal that I felt 
like patting him on the back. The whole significance of the scene he 
had taken in at a glance, and in an instant he too had secured a vise- 
like grip upon the other hind-leg. Now came the final tug of war. 
The hornet tried to rise, but this second passenger was too much for 
him ; he could only buzz along the ground, dragging his load after him, 
while his new assailant clutched desperately at everything within its 
reach — now a dried leaf, now a tiny stone, and even overturning an 
acorn cup in its grasp. Finally a small rough stick was secured, and 
this proved the "last straw." In vain were the struggles to escape. 
The captive could scarcely lift his body from the ground. He i-olled 
and kicked and tumbled, but to no purpose, except to make it very 
lively for his captors ; and the thrusts of that lively dagger were wasted 
on the desert air, for, whether or not those ants knew its searching pro- 
pensities, they certainly managed to keep clear of this busy extremity. 

How long this pell-mell battle would have lasted I know not, for a 
third ant now appeared, and it was astonishing to see how with every 
movement of the hornet this third assailant would lay hold upon some 
convenient stick, and at the same time clutch upon those pine-needles — 
still held by the original captor — to add thereto the burden of its own 
weighted body. 

Practically the ants had won the victory, but what they intended to 
do with the floundering elephant in their hands seemed a problem. But 
to them it was only a question of patience. They had now pinned their 



144 



HIGH WA YS A ND B Y \VA YS. 



victim securely, and held him to await assistance. It came. The entire 
neighborhood had been apprised of the battle, and in less than five min- 
utes the ground swarmed with an army of re-enforcements. They came 
from all directions ; they pitched upon that hornet with terrible feroc- 
ity, and his complete destruction was now 
only a question of moments. I experi- 
enced a sort of malevolent delight at such 
a fitting expiation for a life of rapine and 
murder. Already a dozen pairs of teeth 
were working at the joints of his wings, 
and those members had soon been severed 
from the body had I left him to his fate ; 
but there was a problem of engineer- 
ing skill connected with his capture 
which I wished to solve, and I con- 
cluded to come to his rescue, and 




even spare his life if need be, in an interesting experiment. I therefore 
dislodged all the ants excepting the two original assailants. The over- 
whelming attack upon the hornet had made him furious, but these pug- 
nacious little fellows were even now more than his match, and still held 
him as before. No sooner, however, did I remove from their grasp those 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 145 

extra weights of sticks and pine-needles than their victim took wing, 
and was soon out of sight. But he still carried his doom in his flight 
in these two mischievous passengers, still bent on his destruction ; and 
my conviction is firm that they were even yet his executioners. 

Verily, it is sometimes pleasant to imagine one's self a sluggard 
and seek the ant for wisdom. Time spent in the study of these saga- 
cious little creatures is never lost. Books have been filled to the glory 
of their industry, wisdom, and intelligence ; and one is almost led to con- 
template with envy the record of discovery among the absorbing pages 
of Huber, and, later, the researches of Sir John Lubbock, the illustrious 
historians of this wonderful little people. Huber it was who made the 
astounding disclosure that ants keep slaves ; that a certain species of red- 
ant, uniting in an army of invasion, is wont to take by storm the city 
of a weaker species, devastating their homes, and often carrying off by 
main force the entire population, all of which, as prisoners of war, are 
removed without bodily harm to the subterranean city of the enemy, 
where they are reared in menial servitude. 

The problem of the ant's strange visits to the aphides, or plant-lice — 
that curious exhibition which any one may witness in a half-hour's walk 
in the country — was first solved by the researches of Huber, in whose 
works we read the remarkable discovery which so startled the scientific 
world : that the aphides seem especially provided by Nature as the milch 
cows for the ants, yielding to them a sweet secretion, called honey-dew, 
of which they are very fond ; that this honey-dew is not only sought 
and obtained from the aphides in their native haunts, but that the little 
creatures are actually transported bodily and tenderly borne away into 
the subterranean apartments of the ants, placed in diminutive cattle-pens 
constructed for the purpose, and thus fed, reared, and domesticated. 

To many these facts will present nothing new; but to such they will 
at least serve to freshen the memory in the appreciation of a useful and 
industrious class of our community, who are too little considered, too 
often forgotten, until their demonstrations at some rural picnic only serve 
to bring them into further disrepute and hasten their untimely end. Of 
all the animated life that we tread beneath our feet the ant is the most 
inconspicuous and omnipresent. In no creature on the globe is there 
such a disproportion in comparative size and intellect. These diminu- 
tive, well-rounded heads do a deal of tall thinking, and there is much yet 
to be learned of the mysteries concealed beneath the ant-hill. 



146 



II /Gil IV AYS AND BY IV A VS. 




/^>- 







BIRD-NEST FUNGUS. 



If there is any one class of natural objects which is more than any 
other especially ignored by nearly all "walkers" and nature-students gen- 
erally, it is the wonderful tribe of 
cryptogamous plants known as 
fungi — the great family of toad- 
stools, mushrooms, moulds, and 
mildews — forms of vegetation 
which present some of the most 
inexplicable and mysterious phe- 
nomena to be found in the whole 
vegetable kingdom. 

A sentleman well known to 
scientists as an authority on the 
subject of American fungi, and 
whom I count it an honor to call 
my friend, recently almost took my 
breath away as he told me, in com- 
pany with several other friends eagerly assembled about his microscope, 
that the myriads of beautiful spores which we observed in that bright 
field of his objective actually did not cover a space much larger than 
the diameter of a needle. " And yet," continued he, " each individual of 
them is capable, under favorable conditions, 
of reproducing a cluster of these puff- 
balls which I hold in my hand. It is 
fortunate for us that the fastidious- 
ness of this plant allows it to veg- 
etate only upon dead wood ; for 
otherwise there are enough 
of those spores contained in 
this one specimen, were each 
to germinate and mature, to 
crowd the whole surface of the 
United States, and this cluster could 
easily be the means of covering the 
entire globe." Whether considered as 

ficrurative or not, the reproductive possibilities of these plants are some- 
thing almost beyond computation. There is further light thrown upon 
this subject by Fries, the eminent fungologist, who says of a plant 




FAIKY PARASOLS. 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 147 

closely allied to the above specimen : " The sporules are infinite, for in 
a single individual of Rctkularia maxima I have reckoned ten millions, 
so subtile as to resemble thin smoke, as light as if raised by evapora- 
tion, and dispersed in so many ways that it is difficult to conceive the 
spots from which they could be excluded." 

When it is known that a single one of these plants will cover an 
area of seven square inches, and, moreover, that a single spore will often 
reproduce a whole cluster of the same, it becomes a simple matter to 
compute the enormity of the resultant area. It is a genuine ' treat to 
walk the woods and fields with a companion versed in the science of 
fungology. A new page of Nature's wondrous history is turned with 
every step, and an infinity seems to open up from every heap of rubbish 
and every unsightly clod. The damp woods are especially rich in forms 
of fungous growth. They offer a limitless museum of these strange and 
beautiful curiosities of vegetable life. Here are tiny bird-nests filled 
with eggs clustering upon a lump of leaf-mould, or crowding upon this 
dried stick that snaps beneath your heel. Fragile fairy parasols lift their 
slender forms above the dried leaf. You have crushed hundreds of tliem 
in your path. Sometimes as many as twenty will be seen growing upon 
a single leaf, long since too far gone to need their shelter. Perhaps you 
will chance upon a beautiful drooping hydnum, with its crowded creamy 
fringe hanging from the prostrate beech-trunk; but you would not leave 
this tender growth to decay in the woods if you knew it for the dainty 
morsel it actually is. The whole tribe of mushrooms yields few such 
delicacies. The little barometer, the " earth - star," will send forth its 
cloud of dust as you pass to warn you of that coming storm, or, if the 
day should happen to be clear and dry, will clasp its pointed fingers 
protectingly about its little puff-ball. Near by a heavy stone is lifting 
up among the matted carpet of pine-needles, while from beneath its edge 
a great red -faced mushroom protrudes its head to tell of its struggle 
through the mould. 

As you sit upon the mossy log a bright orange bit of color at your 
side arrests your attention. It proves to be a small toadstool, and as 
you pull it from its bed you lift upon its root — a lump of leaf mould .'' 
No, a large brown chrysalis, through whose shell those fibrous roots 
have penetrated, drawing their sustenance from the imprisoned moth 
still seen within. Neither is this a chance freak of Nature, but rather 
an illustration of one of the eccentricities of this class of plants. This 



148 



IIJGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



is a distinct variety of fungus, whose spores will germinate only upon a 
chrysalis or caterpillar; and it is believed, moreover, that it is confined 
to a single species of insect. 

These are not rare or iso- /"^-^ 
lated instances, but such as 'u^t 

any one may discover who would ^-"^ 
reap " the harvest of a quiet eye." 
I have selected them 
at random from .^f^ ^- 



my own experi- 
ence, and they are 
only a few of many 
which I have memorized 
by careful colored 
drawings from , Li 
the orioina 



specimens 




Of 






I might say that 
almost every species of 
plant has a fungus peculiarly 
its own. The foliage of our deli- 
cate lance-leaved golden-rod has two dicf.ntra. 
such parasites, while the lilac, alder, ash, 
beech, etc., are also known to be thus affected — to the ordinary eye 






AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 149 

appearing as a bloom or coat of dust, but beneath the lens assuming 
widely different and specific forms. Here is an old dried chestnut 
burr picked up at a venture. Search it a moment, and you will find its 
spines covered with small white mushrooms. These are known to the 
dead chestnut burr alone, as they never vegetate on any other substance. 

There is often an almost inexhaustible field for botanic investigation 
even on a single fallen tree. My scientific friend already alluded to 
recently informed me, on his return from an exploring tour, that he had 
spent two days most delightfully and profitably in the study of the yield 
of a single dead tree, and had surprised himself by a discovery by actual 
count of over a hundred distinct species of plants congregated upon it. 
Plumy dicentra clustered along its length, graceful sprays of the frost- 
fiower, with its little spire of snow crystals, rose up here and there, 
scarlet berries of the Indian turnip glowed among the leaves, and, with 
the crowding beds of lycopodiums and mosses, its ferns and lichens, and 
host' of fungous growths, it became an easy matter to extend the list of 
species into the second hundred. It is something worth remembering 
the next time we go into the woods. 

Apropos of the subject of fungi I am reminded of a singular incident 
related to me by the late Professor Wood, the botanist. He had re- 
ceived from a bee-keeper in California, together with a most appealing 
letter, a small box of dead bees, all of which were heavily laden with a 
thick covering of very small paddle -shaped substances of a brownish 
color. The accompanying letter stated that thousands upon thousands 
of the writer's bees had been attacked and were dying from this strange 
disease. He supposed it to be a kind of fungus, but nobody could ex- 
plain its nature or suggest a cure. His business was threatened with 
ruin, and in his extremity he appealed to professional skill for a 
remedy. 

Mr. Wood was not long in ascertaining the cause of the trouble. 
A small magnifier revealed the fact that the so-called fungus was noth- 
ing more than the sticky pollen of a certain milk-weed. He wrote 
immediately to his correspondent stating his discovery, told him to 
search the country for several miles in his neighborhood, and he would 
somewhere surely discover a large tract of this mischievous Asclepias. 
In about a fortnight he received another letter, confirming his theory. 
The plants abounded in the locality, and had been cut down and burned, 
after which the trouble had ceased. 



ISO 



HIGHWAYS AND Py Y W A Y S . 



This peculiarity of the milk-weed is common to the genus, and it is 
not a rare thing to find floundering among the blossoms of our ordinary 
species a honey-bee or bumblebee encumbered as seen in our illustra- 
tion, "A V'ictim of Greed," which in its embarrassed condition has be- 
come an easy prey to a swarm of ants. This figure was drawn from a 
specimen now in my possession. The insect was one of several recently 
found upon a plant of our common Asclepias. Other specimens were a 
yellow-jacket, several honey-bees, and a beautiful Cetonia beetle, whose 
brilliant shining body and smooth legs had escaped, but whose toes were 
tufted with little brushes, or pompons, of the pollen masses. 



'-■>$: 



.:?«SJ 




A VICTIM OK CREED. 



The pollen of most plants exists in the form of the well-known yellow 
powder, and is dusted freely from the opening anthers. But the milk- 
weed presents quite a novel arrangement. Like the wonderful tribe of 
orchids, as well as a long list of other plants, the Asclepias is entirely 
dependent upon the aid of insects not only for its fertilization, but for 
the shedding of its pollen. Any one who will carefully examine its 
flower will discover the five little cups, like minute cornucopias, sur- 
rounding its central column. These are the nectaries, containing the 
sweets so attractive to the insects ; and it is amusing to watch the 
eager antics of the bumblebee as he follows around the circle, thrusting 
his long black tongue deep into each sac. If you now observe still 
closer, you will see how Nature utilizes the insect in the propagation 
of those fuzzy seed-clouds. 

It is scarcely necessary to refer to the fact that in order for a plant 
to set seed it is necessary that the stigma of the flower shall be dusted 
with the pollen. We see it naturally performed in many blossoms, but 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 



151 



in the milk-weed such a spontaneous process is impossible, for the pollen 
is concealed in a pouch, from which it never would escape unless with- 
drawn by some external force. Instead of 
the ordinary powder, the pollen is here 
gathered into oblong clusters. They are 
arranged in pairs, five in number, sur- 
roundins: and embedded in the central col- 
umn. The point of union of each couple is 
at the top, where they are provided with 
two glutinous disks, which there lie in 
wait for their deliverer. No sooner 
does the foot, or leg, or body, or 
even a hair, of this bee we are 
watching come in contact 
with these little 
disks than they 
clasp upon it, and 
are pulled from their 
hiding-places. They 
thus accumulate, 
and are drag- 
ged about 
by the in- 




sect, and carried from flower to flower, each 
of which becomes cross-fertilized by thus hav- 
ing its stigma at the upper part of the blossom 
brought into contact with the pollen. We may, 
therefore, thank the bees and hornets for those silky 
pods that glisten on our September roadsides. 
Remarkable as is the structure of the milk-weed blossom, it is sur- 
passed in interest by the wondrous mechanism found among the orchids. 
Here is a family of plants numbering some thousands of known species, 
and yet nearly all of them would be doomed to extinction were it not 
for their legion of little insect friends. And the marvels of ingenuity by 



152 HIG HWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

which Nature insures their aid are ahiiost past behef. The hosts of 
humming-birds, too, that throng the Paradise of the Amazons! How 
significant tlie coincidence! for here the orchids dwell in all their splen- 
dor and profusion. How many of those rare blossoms look to these 
winged sun-gems for the condition of their existence ! 

It is enough to make one dumb with awe and wonderment even to 
contemplate the inexhaustible variety in their freaks of outward form 
alone, and it will be a day long to be remembered by any one who is 
fortunate enough to spend an hour or two within the fairy tropics of a 
conservatory devoted to these blossoms of the air. Here are colors and 
tones that are not of this world, but rather radiations borrowed from the 
celestial rainbow and the sunset and the pure blue sky. Here are scin- 
tillating textures woven with yellow light, and twilight purples of a hun- 
dred hues. 

And what astounding mimicry ! Here a grotesque form that might 
almost be mistaken for a bee ! Here a long spray hung full with great 
green spiders clinging on the stem ; a little dove spreads its wings, as 
though alighting in a blossom near ; and again a comical frog grins 
at you from the shadows of a den of petals. Observe — quick ! ere it 
flies — this brilliant butterfly hovering above the fl owners ! It is an 
orchid. 

This great tribe of plants, among the most beautiful on the face 
of the earth, were only quite recently revealed to us in all their true 
significance. Their endless forms and colors have afforded sufificient 
stimulus to most botanists ; but any one who will go through an 
orchid conservatory in company with Darwin will acquire a vastly in- 
creased interest in these flowers, of which their strange shapes are but 
an alluring hint. 

It is not necessary, however, to seek the aid of the florist in order 
to study the mystery of the orchid. We can go into our woods and 
fields and find an abundant harvest for investigation. There is the little 
spiranthes, or ladies' - tresses, to be seen in almost any summer ramble. 
All who love the hemlock woods will remember the common cypripe- 
dium, or moccason - flower, also called lady's -slipper; and the fragrant 
"grass pink," or sweet-scented Arethusa, with its lovely purple blossom, 
will be associated with the memory of many a marshy meadow. 

Were you to retrace your steps you might still reclaim a delicate, 
wilting spray which lies broken in your footpath, where it bloomed 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 



153 



unheeded among the sedges. Had you 



known 



its charm hig 



secret, or seen 



Its 



murmunng 



nursHng kissing its 



every flower, you never had trodden 
upon it. It is the Httle fringed or- 
chid, Platanthera psycodes, of our 
moist meadows. Perhaps the accom- 
panying iUustration will serve to re- 
call it, if the imagination lend its aid 
in imparting to its fringed petals a 
tint of delicate lavender purple. 

The life-history of this flower, as it 
has been revealed to me through recent 
observations of my own, is of such absorb- 
ing interest that I am tempted into a narra- 
tive of my investigations. They were the out- 
come of an intent perusal of Darwin's wonderful 
discoveries chronicled in his " Fertilization of Or- 
chids." This book led me with feverish impulse 
into the conservatory and field, and has resulted 
in a large number of drawings, anions; which 
are those relating to the little orchid in ques- 
tion. Like many flowers, this one is con- 
structed on a principle of reciprocity. The 
insects serve the plant, and the plant yields 
them food in return. Let us examine the structure 
of this litde orchid. It will be readily understood 
by reference to the diagrams on the following page 
In this instance the bait consists of the usual 
sweet secretion, here deposited at the end of 
a curved tubular nectary, nearly an inch in 
length. The opening to this nectary 
is seen directly in the heart of the /^iM^f^^--^ 

■ ■ /AH' ■ 



flower. But observe how that 
entrance is guarded — defended 
with two clubs, if I may so speak, the 
pollen masses bearing some such resem- 
blance. These are hidden in two pockets, 




THE URCmi) AND ITS FRIEND. 



154 



HIGH WAYS AND BYlVAyS. 



one on each side of the opening. The lower extremity of each is 
provided with a flat, sticky disk, turned inward. This is all very sim- 
ple. The trap is set. Now let us see how it 
works. A small brown hawk-moth hovers near; 
he poises like a humming-bird in front of the 
blossom, uncoils his slender tongue, and thrusts 
it into the opening of the nectary. So trans- 
parent is this tiny tube that you can readily 
see, not only the tongue within, but the gradual 
absorption of the nectar. As the moth thus 
sips he brings his tongue in contact with one 
or both of the sticky disks. They clasp it firm- 
1)', and as the member is withdrawn they are 
pulled out of their pockets, and stand erect ypon 
the insect's tongue. This alone is surprising, 
but what follows is stranger still. In a very few 
seconds the little club begins to sink forward, 
gradually lowering, until it has brought itself 
nearly level with the tongue. Wilted, you will 
imagine. Not so; it is still firm in its new po- 




ll i 

CONSTRUCTION OF ORCHID. 

A, centre of flower (petals re- 
moved) ; p, pouches contain- 
ing pollen clubs, with the two 
disks guarding the opening to 
nectary, n ; B, pollen clubs 
isolated, to show their posi- 
tion in pouches, and their two 
glutinous disks, d d. The 
stigma of flower is indicated 
by the rough spot above 
opening to nectary. 



sition. And what will be your surprise, if 
you watch closely as the humming rover 
sips from the next flower, on seeing the 
tips of that club so tilted strike directly 
against the stigma, or fertilizing surface, 
just above the opening of the nectary ! 
The flower is thus fertilized, and will ma- 
ture its seeds. 

The flowers are frequented by several 
kinds of insects, but this little dav-flvinaf 
sphinx is one of their most common visit- 
ors ; and the very conformation of the or- 
chid would indicate, from its slender tube 
and the distance of the nectar from the 
orifice, an adaptation to the long, slender 
tongues of moths and butterflies. I have 

never happened to see a bee upon this orchid, and I doubt whether 
the insect could reach the nectar unless, perhaps, through the external 




REMOVAL OF POLLEN. 

C, side view of flower (petals removed), 
showing head of sphinx-moth and re- 
moval of pollen on insect's tongue ; D, 
position immediately assumed by pol- 
len club, the sticky disk, d, clasping 
the insect's tongue. 




AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 155 

puncture of some bumblebee, which insect has a well-known trick of 
cutting matters short, and saving itself trouble, by biting through the 
honey-tube from the outside. Only a few days since I watched a 
bumblebee in a bed of toad-flax thus cheating Nature and rifling the 
blossoms ; and in a w^hole bouquet afterward gathered it was difficult to 
find a single flower, or even mature bud, whose nectary had not been 
thus punctured near its tip. 

These experiments with the orchid may be tried by any one. The 
drawings herewith given were made from an 
actual specimen of the insect, which suffered 
martyrdom in the cause. You may observe 
the appearance of its tongue after searching a ~ 

few nectaries. While making the drawing a j-t*^ 

common house-fly lit among the blossoms, -- - 
and, although it appeared to know the neigh- ^ ..^^tyr to science. 

borhood of the bait, it seemed powerless to 

reach it. With a little forcible encouragement on my part, however, the 
insect succeeded in getting one of its eyes decorated with a pollen club. 

It was interesting, also, to notice the sagacity of a diminutive spider 
that seemed to know the attraction of those honey-tubes, and had spread 
its web among the blossoms. Its meshes were sprinkled with minute 
insects, among which I discovered one rash atom with a club-shaped 
appendage, as large as its body, firmly attached to the top of its head. 

There are several other of our native orchids commonly met with 
equally if not more interesting ; and in each variety there will be found 
some new and wonderful adaptation, some surprising mechanism, for the 
removal and utility of its pollen. In Arethusa and pogonia it is a little 
lid that lifts as the bee leaves the flower, and lets fall the pollen on the 
intruder's back. The cypripedium of our woods is a veritable trap, with 
but one exit, in escaping from which the insect gets a dab of pollen on 
its head, or thorax ; and I might continue the list indefinitely. 

The fertilization of the greater green orchis, described by Professor 
Gray, presents a remarkable adaptation to a distinct family of insects. 
In this species the nectary is about two inches in length, and only the 
slender tongue of the sphinx-moths could reach its sweets; moreover, the 
disks, with evident design, are here placed far apart, and as the moth 
seeks the nectar the rounded projecting eyes are brought directly in con 
tact with those clinging surfaces, and the pollen masses are thus borne 



156 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 

away upon the insect's eyes. In a few seconds they droop as already 
described, and at such an angle as to exactly strike the stigma of the 
flower next visited. 

These are our own native species ; but in the pages of Darwin there 
are described many exotic varieties of most intricate and amazing mech- 
anism, by which Nature, while thus preventing the self-fertilization of the 
flower, equally insures its cross-fertilization, thus affording unanswerable 
arguments in favor of the pet theories of this great philosopher. 

There are similar mysteries concealed within the hearts of many of 
our most common wild flowers, and it is one of the most inspiring fasci- 
nations of Nature-study that, while rewarding her devotees with a full 
measure of her confidence, she still allures them on with an inex- 
haustible reserve. You may discover some unknown flower, dissect and 
analyze its parts, and find its place among the genera and species of 
vegetation ; but there are strange testimonies beneath its conformation 
that are still unheeded, even as in these curious orchids, known and 
classified long ere Darwin sought the secret of their wondrous forms. 

We cannot all be scientists or explorers, but we can at least learn to 
lend an answering intelligent welcome to those little faces that smile at 
us from among the grass and withered leaves, that crowd humbly about 
our feet, and are too often idly crushed beneath our heel. The darkest 
pathless forest is relieved of its gloom to him who can nod a greeting 
with every footstep ; who knows the pale dicentra that nods to him in 
return ; who can call by name the peeping lizard among the moss, the 
pale white pipe among the matted leaves, or even the covering mould 
among the damp debris. 

And to him who knows the arcana beneath a stone ; who has learned 
with reverence how the clover goes to sleep, how the fire-weed spins its 
silken floss, or how the spider floats its web from tree to tree ; who has 
seen the brilliant cassida, the palpitating gem upon the leaf, change from 
burnished gold to iridescent pearl, or has watched the wondrous resur- 
rection of the imago bursting from its living tomb — to such a one there 
is in all the length and breadth of Nature no such thing as exile, no 
such thought as loneliness, and it were the voice of an unknown senti- 
ment which should declare that 

" A primrose by a river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothinjr more." 



AMONG OUR FOOTPRINTS. 



157 



For there was a something deeper, something sweeter, that unfolded with 
those dewy petals, something from that heart laid bare that breathed its 
perfumed whisper in the gloaming, and found its answer in that throb 
of sympathy, a love which might still further feel, and, feeling, whisper 
in return : 

"The bubbling brook doth leap when I come by, 

Because my feet find measure with its call ; 
The birds know when the friend they love is nigh. 

For I am known to them, both great and small ; 
The flower that on the lonely hill-side grows 

Expects me there when spring its bloom has given j 
And many a tree and bush my wanderings knows, 

And e'en the clouds and silent stars of heaven." 




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